Biogen Drug Gives New Momentum to Decades-Old Protein Hypothesis
Biogen Drug: Potential Alzheimer’s Game Changer?
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The results of Biogen Idec Inc.’s experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease provide the best evidence so far that the memory-robbing condition is caused by an errant protein in the brain that, if stopped, could lead to an effective treatment.
German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer was the first to connect dementia to abnormal protein deposits in brain tissue back in 1906, but it took another 80 years for scientists to understand where the protein, known as beta amyloid, was made and to see it as a potential target in treating Alzheimer’s disease.