Japanese Researchers Use GM Rice to Battle Alzheimer's Disease

A research team from Japan successfully identified a protein linked to Alzheimer's disease. Their findings are raising hopes for the development of new oral medicines to fight the disease.

The brains of individuals experiencing Alzheimer's diseases have senile plaques, which are deposits formed by a protein called beta amyloid. It is believed that this accumulation in the brain is the cause of the disease. Professor Shoichi Ishiura and colleagues at the University of Tokyo have been developing oral vaccines that produce antibodies that attack beta amyloid to prevent the production of senile plaques. In their previous study, they transformed sweet pepper plants to produce beta amyloid and the leaves were fed to mice with Alzheimer's disease. This resulted to a decrease in beta amyloid in the brains of the mice.

In their latest experiments, another set of mice were fed with genetically modified rice containing beta amyloid genes. To increase immunity among the mice, they also gave beta amyloid injection to the mice. Results showed that as the antibodies recognizing the beta amyloid increased, the beta amyloid level in the brain decreased. The mice also exhibited improvements in their memory.

Beta amyloid injections have been stopped in the U.S. due to its side effects. Ishiura says oral administration of vaccines could prevent such problems.

Read the original news article at http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110829p2a00m0na006000c.html.