Vaccine may protect against Alzheimer's

University of Texas scientists say they've found doses of DNA-gene-coated gold particles protect mice against a protein involved in Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers at UT's Southwestern Medical Center say by pressure-injecting the gene responsible for producing the specific protein -- amyloid-beta 42 -- they caused the mice to make antibodies and greatly reduced the protein's build-up in the brain.
Accumulation of amyloid-beta 42 in humans is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.
"The whole point of the study (was) to determine whether the antibody is therapeutically effective as a means to inhibit the formation of amyloid-beta storage in the brain, and it is," said Dr. Roger Rosenberg, the study's senior author and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center at UT Southwestern.
The gene injection avoids a serious side-effect that caused the cancellation of a previous multi-center human trial with amyloid-beta 42, researchers said. In that earlier study, people received injections of the protein itself and some developed dangerous brain inflammation.
The new study is available online and will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the Neurological Sciences.