The medical black technology system of the top student

Chapter 236 The questioned β-amyloid hypothesis

Looking at the large amount of failure data displayed in the article, Lu Liang couldn't help but fall into silence.

Alzheimer's disease is more difficult than he imagined.

Even though Lu Liang hasn't started working on it yet, he has already encountered a very critical problem.

That is the choice of drug development direction.

If you want to develop drugs to alleviate Alzheimer's disease, you must have a clear drug target.

Now, there are two targets recognized as effective by the medical community.

The first target is β-amyloid protein.

This target mainly revolves around the beta-amyloid abnormal deposition hypothesis.

The ultimate goal of the drug is to target β-amyloid protein and reduce the production of amyloid protein by inhibiting the activities of β-secretase and γ-secretase.

Or clearing extracellular plaques from nerve cells or abnormal accumulation of amyloid in tissues.

To achieve the purpose of treating Alzheimer's disease.

However, there is a problem with the abnormal beta-amyloid deposition hypothesis.

That was a problem Lu Liang discovered when he was searching for information related to Alzheimer's disease.

At that time, he saw a journal report claiming that in recent years, some scholars had questioned that the β-amyloid hypothesis might be a wrong theory.

Those scholars believe that everyone in the current academic community has been misled by the β-amyloid hypothesis.

These scholars believe that Alzheimer's disease and beta-amyloid are likely to be causally related.

It is Alzheimer's disease that produces the phenomenon of abnormal deposition of beta-amyloid protein.

It is not abnormal deposition of beta-amyloid protein that causes Alzheimer's disease.

Targeting beta-amyloid protein does not play a role in treating Alzheimer's disease.

At that time, Lu Liang still thought it was strange that the β-amyloid hypothesis was a theory from a long time ago.

If there is a problem with the β-amyloid hypothesis, some people should have started to question it long ago. Why has it only been in recent years that some people have raised their voices to question it.

It's just that Lu Liang didn't pay too much attention to this aspect at that time. He only briefly understood it.

But now when he saw the statistics in the article, Lu Liang suddenly understood the situation.

Because in recent years, the development of drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease based on the β-amyloid hypothesis has failed without exception.

Be it Pfizer or Roche, these pharmaceutical giants all ended in failure.

It’s hard not to think about whether the “β-amyloid” hypothesis is really tenable.

If “beta-amyloid” is excluded.

Then there is only one target left.

This target is the Tau protein.

Drugs are used to inhibit the hyperphosphorylation of Tau protein and return the phosphorylation level of Tau protein to normal.

Should we choose β-amyloid protein as the target or Tau protein as the target?

But the key point is that Tau protein is also a hypothesis, just like β-amyloid.

Lu Liang was in a dilemma for the first time.

In the office.

“Beta-amyloid?”

When Ji Hong heard this word, he couldn't help but pause in his movements. He raised his head and looked at Lu Liang in confusion.

Lu Liang nodded. He hesitated for a long time, but in the end he was unable to decide on the direction of developing new drugs.

After hesitating for a long time, Lu Liang chose to come to Ji Hong to see if Ji Hong could help him with his reference.

Ji Hong smiled, with some confusion in his smile: Xiao Lu, why did you go to study Alzheimer's disease?

Lu Liang did not hide anything and told everything about Wang Wentao.

After hearing this incident, Ji Hong was also full of surprise. He did not expect that such a thing would happen in Wang Wentao's family in just one Chinese New Year.

Lu Liang said: Teacher, is the β-amyloid hypothesis tenable? Is it true and valid?

This is the issue that Lu Liang is most worried about. If this hypothesis is not established from the beginning and the theoretical direction is wrong, then even if he finally analyzes the drug, it will not have any therapeutic effect on Alzheimer's disease.

After Ji Hong took a sip of water, he smiled and said, Don't say it, Xiao Lu. In fact, your problem caused quite a stir at the time.

Some people who were studying Alzheimer's disease at that time really had doubts about the beta-amyloid hypothesis.

Lu Liang frowned: So, is this hypothesis actually untenable?

Ji Hong shook his head: There is actually no problem with this hypothesis. I was curious at first and asked a scholar who studied this area. The person told me that by clearing amyloid protein deposition outside nerve cells, it would be beneficial to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Symptoms can be helpful.”

As for why major pharmaceutical companies fail, the reason is very simple.

The nervous system is a complex and huge system. Major pharmaceutical companies have different choices of β-secretase or γ-secretase inhibition sites, and the final results are naturally completely different.

After Lu Liang was silent for a moment, he looked astonished: In other words, the β-amyloid hypothesis is still valid.

Ji Hong nodded and replied: Indeed, don't forget, there are also drugs developed based on the β-amyloid hypothesis, such as Biogen's Aducanumab.

Aducanumab is a monoclonal antibody, a drug developed by Biogen to treat Alzheimer's disease. The principle of its drug is based on the β-amyloid hypothesis.

This drug will be approved by the US FDA for listing in 2021.

This made Lu Liang feel a little surprised. Logically speaking, this kind of drug that broke the deadlock in research and development and made breakthrough progress should be very famous. How come he hadn't heard of it at all?

Seemingly sensing Lu Liang's confusion, Ji Hong explained: It's just a pity that Bogen's drug has too many side effects.

In people who use this drug to treat Alzheimer's disease, 35% of patients develop cerebral edema, and 18% to 22.7% develop microbleeds in the brain.

Moreover, in just two months, four patient deaths occurred.

So, this drug is basically sold in the United States, and doctors in other countries are unwilling to prescribe it to patients.

Lu Liang couldn't help but clicked his tongue after hearing this. This side effect is really not that serious. 35% of patients suffer from cerebral edema, which is already a very scary proportion.

The patient is taking medicine, and it is estimated that the person will be fucked to death before the disease is cured.

However, this also gave Lu Liangliang a clear decision, and he silently set the direction for the next drug development.

That is to develop drugs targeting β-amyloid protein.