Stanford Reverses Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer's with Brain Metabolism Drug

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16 points·rmason··4 comments

In mice. “Their research has demonstrated that drugs blocking this pathway can restore cognitive function in Alzheimer’s mice by improving brain metabolism.”

I just hope one day these mice can see the advances we have achieved in medicine for them.

I know a lot of things are in mice; This is more than that. I wish to point out this passage from the paper as it stands on bioRxiv:

“Here we report that KYN generated by IDO1 suppresses astrocytic lactate transfer to neurons in mouse models of AD pathology and human iPSC-derived astrocytes from late-onset AD subjects.”

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2024/06/28/202...

From reading the abstract and editor’s perspective, part of this seems to involve an unfortunate stimulation of kynurenine synthesis from tryptophan, which has deleterious effects on brain cell energy metabolism?

It’s pretty interesting to just read the Wikipedia page on kynurenine with this perspective in mind: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kynurenine

At stanford. Since the former president was kicked out because he cheated on Alzheimer's research, and with a general lack of replicability, not only is the "in mice" appropriate but also put a little asterisk for suspicious circumstances.

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