Drug Candidates Targeting Spherons As a Cause of Alzheimer's Disease
Nymox is a world leader in research and development into drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease that target spherons. Spherons are tiny balls of densely packed protein found in brain cells scattered throughout the brains of all humans from age one.
Nymox researchers believe they have found compelling evidence that links spherons to senile plaques -- the characteristic lesion found abundantly in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease and believed by many researchers to play a pivotal role in the illness. They have found that the spherons found in the human brain progressively increase in size throughout life until it is believed that they become so big (many hundred times bigger by age 75 compared to age one) that they burst. According to Nymox researchers, the bursting spherons then turn into the senile plaques uniquely characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. To prove this, Nymox researchers first showed that spherons and plaques were located in the exactly identical specific locations in the brain, and that the number of plaques which appears in Alzheimer's disease was correlated with the number of spherons which have disappeared. Then they extracted and purified spherons from the brain and showed that spherons contained the marker molecules found in plaques. The Nymox team then showed that spherons can be turned into plaques when they are burst in the test tube or when they are injected into experimental animals. In addition, the Nymox researchers provided 20 highly specific criteria of validity linking spherons to Alzheimer's. See Alzheimer's Reports (2000; 3:177-184,) Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (1998; 1:1-34) and Drug News and Perspectives (1998; 11(8): 469-479).
Nymox believes that stopping or inhibiting the transformation of spherons into senile plaques will stop or slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease. Nymox has patents covering both methods for using spherons as targets for developing drugs and for the actual drug candidates discovered.
Nymox now has several drug candidates, which have shown promise in animal and other preclinical studies. The Nymox drug candidates in development (such as NX-D2858) are capable of blocking the transformation of human spherons into plaques in the test tube and in the experimental animal. These Nymox compounds offer rational hope for treatments that may eventually be capable of slowing the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Nymox cautions that the spheron based Nymox Alzheimer's candidate drugs, while showing dramatic positive effects in animals, and while showing no toxicity so far, have yet to be tested in humans.
