This release is available in French. Recent animal studies have
shown that clioquinol – an 80-year old drug once used to treat
diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders – can reverse the
progression of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's
diseases. Scientists, however, had a variety of theories to
attempt to explain how a single compound could have such similar
effects on three unrelated neurodegenerative disorders.
Researchers at McGill University have discovered a dramatic
possible new answer: According to Dr. Siegfried Hekimi and
colleagues at McGill's Department of Biology, clioquinol acts
directly on a protein called CLK-1, often informally called
"clock-1," and might slow down the aging process. The advance
online edition of their study was published in Oct. 2008 in the
Journal of Biological Chemistry. "Clioquinol is a very powerful
inhibitor of clock-1," explained Hekimi, McGill's Strathcona
Chair of Zoology and Robert Archibald & Catherine Louise
Campbell Chair in Developmental Biology. "Beca