How a deadly tumour cell protein could help fight Alzheimer’s disease

A protein secreted by deadly tumour cells could be a powerful weapon against Alzheimer’s disease, Chinese researchers have found.

While Alzheimer’s disease and cancer are common in ageing populations and are among the leading causes of death worldwide, it is unusual for them to occur in the same person.

A Chinese research team said late last month they had identified a protein from cancer cells that could explain why patients with a history of cancer were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.

This discovery could open new doors for treating Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia that affects memory, thinking and behaviour and for which there is no cure.

“We show that cystatin C secreted from peripheral tumour cells effectively reduces amyloid plaque burden and rescues cognition in mouse models of [Alzheimer’s disease],” scientists from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in the central Chinese city of Wuhan wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell on January 22.

They said the findings offered “significant conceptual advances” into cancer neuroscience and new therapeutic avenues aimed at degrading existing amyloid plaques for “precision-targeted Alzheimer’s disease therapy”.

Amyloid plaques are clusters of unusual forms of protein that develop in nerve cells. Beta-amyloid protein accumulates abnormally in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, forming plaques that disrupt cell function. These deposits are considered a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

South China Morning Post