A cancer drug that sweeps an ominous plaque-forming protein from mouse brains within hours and reverses Alzheimer’s-like behavior in the rodents in days may offer a powerful new way to prevent or even reverse the brain-wasting disease in humans.
The drug, called bexarotene, has been on the market for about 10 years to treat T-cell lymphoma, often after other treatments have failed. But bexarotene can do a completely different job in the brain, researchers report online February 9 in Science.
“This is a pretty fantastic drug,” says Paige Cramer of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, coauthor of the new study, which used bexarotene to treat mice suffering from an Alzheimer’s-like condition.