A Spanish technique to ‘clean’ Alzheimer’s proteins in the brain

A Spanish laboratory could have the key to put a siege on Alzheimer’s. Although there are still questions to be answered, the results of a clinical trial developed by Grifols and just presented in Barcelona put a new way of dealing with one of the great evils of Western society at the center of the stage. It will not be a drug but a plasma extraction procedure to cleanse the brain of the accumulation of neurodegenerative proteins that is associated with the disease. With this technique, according to the authors of the study, moderate-stage patients (those who need constant supervision for activities of daily living) showed a 61% slowdown in Alzheimer’s progression compared to people in the placebo group. «The effect of the treatment is very remarkable. These findings open new avenues for the investigation of neurodegenerative disorders in adults and can offer Alzheimer’s patients a new treatment modality, «says Óscar López, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA). The idea is to remove one of the proteins that are stored in the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s, beta-amyloid. Since they circulate in the plasma together with albumin, the researchers bet on the extraction of said plasma to be able to cleanse and thus limit the impact of the disease on cognitive functions. How? Through plasmapheresis (a consolidated and safe technique based on plasma exchange and used for some autoimmune diseases) and its replacement with albumin (a well-tolerated protein with multiple therapeutic properties – antioxidants, immunomodulators and anti-inflammatory drugs).

Grfls researcher handling samples of beta-amyloid, the protein extracted from the brain LABORATORIOS GRIFOLS
The results have been «very relevant» in the «moderate stage», as the authors outlined during the presentation of the study (AMBAR) at the Clinical Congress trials on Alzheimer’s disease (CTAD), last weekend. In the words of the spokesman of the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN), Guillermo García Ribas, «it is the first time in 15 years that positive results have been obtained from a multicenter clinical trial in the slowdown of Alzheimer’s disease», a disease that in 2030 could affect to more than 75 million people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). However, there is no change in the progression of the disease in people with mild Alzheimer’s. And this is one of the questions that must be analyzed. As García Ribas points out in commenting on this study, «it will be necessary to assess what differences there are between the mildly affected and the moderate ones in order to understand why this technique works in one group and not in another». In addition, «it will be necessary to see if albumin is necessary or it would be enough with plasma withdrawal, how much and for how long, for example». In the same vein, Víctor Grifols Roura, the president of Grifols, says: «We will continue to explore the potential of plasma proteins and plasma turnover in subsequent studies.» It is precisely this company which, together with the ACE Foundation and the Alzheimer Disease Research Center of the University of Pittsburgh, launched in 2004 a comprehensive research strategy in Alzheimer’s. In this framework, AMBAR was born, the international, multicenter, double-blind clinical trial in which nearly 500 Alzheimer patients from 41 hospitals in Europe and the US have participated. As a result of this trial, Grifols shares shot up almost 8.8% on the IBEX yesterday.