Alzheimer's Miracle Drug Bexarotene Doesn't Work as Reported

“We all went back to our labs and tried to confirm these promising findings” ... “We repeated the initial experiments — a standard process in science. Combined results are really important in this field. None of us found anything like what they described in the 2012 paper.” By +Bob DeMarco +Alzheimer's Reading Room  Co-authors Karthikeyan Veeraraghavalu and Sangram Sisodia of the University of Chicago Three teams of highly respected Alzheimer’s researchers failed to replicate what appeared to be breakthrough results for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease using existing cancer drug Targretin® (brand name Bexarotene) (see below). The original results, presented online Feb. 9, 2012, suggested that the drug bexarotene could rapidly reverse the buildup of beta amyloid plaques (Aβ) — a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — in the brains of mice. According to the authors of the 2012 report, drug treatment quickly removed most of the plaques and brought rapid reversal of the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits related to the onset of Alzheimer’s. Interestingly, The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and BrightFocus Foundation recently announced a funding collaboration that will support a Phase I human clinical trial to evaluate bexarotene as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease. The trial will be conducted by ReXceptor Inc., a biotechnology company set-up by researchers at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU)...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - Category: Dementia Authors: Source Type: blogs