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Professor Kim Tae-wan |
By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter
A group of neuroscientists led by a Korean have shed new light on a possible remedy for Alzheimer's disease by clarifying how it leads to memory loss and cognitive malfunction.
A Columbia University team headed by professors Kim Tae-wan and Gilbert Di Paolo found that a fragment of a protein snipped from another protein precursor, technically called oligomers of amyloid beta (Abeta), worsens cognitive and memory-related performance. The finding was posted Sunday on the Web site of Nature Neuroscience, which is affiliated with prominent scientific journal Nature.
About 24 million people worldwide suffer from the terminal illness. There is no known cure. It is not clarified whether proposed treatments can slow its progress or just manage the symptoms.
The study is significant in that it found the process in the degenerative disease is different from what was formerly believed. It was thought that overly processed amyloid beta is deposited into the brain in the form of plaque, impairing neurons.
The study showed oligomers of amyloid beta highly diminishes the amount of PIP2, a substance crucial for controlling neural functions as a major neurotransmitter, meaning neurons exposed to Abeta lose a large portion of PIP2 without damaging phosphatides, impairing memory and cognition capability.
An experiment in the study also showed synapses once exposed to Abeta oligomers resumed their normal functioning in rats' brains after the amount of synaptogenin 1, a breakdown enzyme of PIP2, was genetically halved.
"The outcome implies we can deter the neural impairment in the brain by Abeta without causing further deterioration to brain functions by finding the substance blocking the effect of synaptogenin 1," the study said.
Professor Kim, a graduate of Yonsei University, has been working at Columbia University since 2000. His current research is about molecular mechanisms underlying the "inherited," or familial, Alzheimer's disease.
In his 2006 study in collaboration with Chung Sung-kwon, a professor at Sungkyunkwan University, Kim found PIP2, or phosphatidylinositol bisphosphate, can also be a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.
hckim@koreattimes.co.kr
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