Using gene therapy, researchers have been able to reverse memory loss in mice genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s Disease.
“Within a month of treatment, mice that had already suffered memory deficits could learn and remember how to find their way through a water maze,” says co-author Robert Marr, a post-doctoral researcher in Verma’s lab.
“It appears that these mice can come back from a very severe level of disease progression,” adds first author Oded Singer, also at the Salk. “This is a very important finding because humans are usually diagnosed when the disease has already progressed relatively far.”
An important caveat:
But he warns that it is too early to make direct comparisons with the human disease, since mice ordinarily don’t develop the symptoms of the disease unless they are genetically engineered to do so.
Still, exciting stuff.
