Research team discovers breakthrough with potential to reverse Alzheimer's
Exciting work, but mouse models of alzheimers are uniquely bad, even among mouse models. Mice don't get alzheimers, and the mechanisms by which we induce alzheimers-like conditions in mice are not analogous to human alzheimers. This model, 5xfad, overexpresses app and psen1, which is not how human alzheimers works[0]. So basically, we give mice a different disease that happens to looks like alzheimers, then cure that disease, and hope that the cure somehow transfers to real alzheimers, which (like cancer) may not even end up being one well defined disease.There's some work on developing organoids and other models that will hopefully allow us to have better luck with this disease space in the future, but until then, we don't have good models. Take any research in mice in neurodegeneration with an even bigger grain of salt than other diseases.However, the mechanism found here is certainly very cool, and the neurological/mechanistic research is pretty interesting. Just don't have expectations of this directly translating into a successful drug development process - the mechanistic insights of the gene they studies are fascinating and worthy research on their own to increase our understanding of neural proteins and their functions.[0]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05722-9