News Bytes of the Week--Get rowdy at this pub and you'll get bounced by a bot [News]
Is a cure for Alzheimer's just years away?German researchers report in Science that they developed a drug that may combat Alzheimer's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects some five million Americans. The new therapy targets beta-secretase, an enzyme on neurons around which plaques (buildups of a protein called beta-amyloid) cluster in the brain. (Such plaques are a hallmark of the disorder and their discovery in a postmortem brain is the only way to confirm that a person had the illness.) Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and the pharmaceutical company JADO Technologies, both in Dresden, Germany, say their drug, which targets beta-secretase erased 50 percent of plaques in test fruit flies and mice within four hours of its administration. The team plans to do more animal testing and, if successful, conduct human trials within two years. (The Telegraph) [More]