A ST ANDREWS researcher has made a discovery that might assist in developing future treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, the incurable and fatal disease which affects around 700,000 people in the UK, 56,000 of them in Scotland.

The work has been done by neurobiologist Dr Frank Gunn-Moore, who has identified a new protein associated with the progression of the disease and increased stress in the brain, which subsequently lead to brain cell death.

He said that endophilin I is known to be involved in how nerve cells talk to each other, and that increased amounts of it are an indicator for interaction between amyloid beta, and a protein called ABAD.

“Amyloid builds up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia,” said Dr Gunn-Moore.

“It forms plaques which can lead to brain cell death that causes memory loss and other devastating symptoms of dementia.

“The amyloid/ABAD interaction has been previously identified as a marker for the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

“We know very little about the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease before the amyloid plaques are formed.

“It may be that production of amyloid beta is the earliest event in Alzheimer’s disease, so identification of early markers for amyloid beta would have strong implications for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.”

The research was carried out by Dr Gunn-Moore and PhD student Yimin Ren, alongside a team of international researchers at Columbia University in the USA, led by Professor Shi Du Yan.

The study was funded by the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and the Medical Research Council.

The chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, Rebecca Wood, said that a better understanding of the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain will enable scientists to develop tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s accurately and then give future treatments that halt the disease before the brain is damaged.

“Delaying Alzheimer’s disease even for a little while can be a real benefit to the quality of life of both patients and their carers,” she said.

“We desperately need more money for research to help find a cure to this devastating disease.”

It has been said that Alzheimer’s research is severely under-funded, with only £11 spent on UK research annually per patient, compared with £289 for people with cancer even though the number of people with these conditions is similar.

The disease costs the UK more than cancer, heart disease and stroke combined.