Researchers identify drug that can grow new brain cells
POSTED July 13, 2010 - 15:28 | POSTED BY neha gupta
Last edited by Silky Chandvani on July 13, 2010 - 16:06
Mammals are enabled to grow new brain cells throughout their life span. However, most of these cells die even before reaching maturity.
This new drug, called P7C3 for now, can help more of the baby cells to live and grow in order to become adult functioning cells.
"We make new neurons every day in our brain," Andrew Pieper of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview. "What our compound does is allow more of them to survive."
Study done on mice
For the study, 1000 compounds from 300000 different chemicals were pooled together by the researchers.
The representative compounds were then administered to mice.
The brains of the mice were then dissected to see if any of them had made new brain cells in the hippocampus region.
The hippocampus region of our brain is associated with learning and memory.
Revelations of the study
On administering the compound P7C3 to the rats for two months, the elderly rodents did far better than other old rats in learning their way around a water maze.
Further dissection established that the treated rats had turned out to develop three times the usual number of newborn neurons in a brain region called the dentate gyrus.
They made a derivative of P7C3 called A20 that worked even better.
On testing the rats for compounds like Dimebon and the Serono, the researchers found that these drugs too stimulated the growth of new brain cells.
Further research may result in better drug treatment for Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders like strokes and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
Researchers are not very sure if this drug could be used for treating conditions like dementia as well.
"This striking demonstration of a treatment that stems age-related cognitive decline in living animals points the way to potential development of the first cures that will address the core illness process in Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute on Mental Health, which funded the study.
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