Surrounding beta-amyloid

While beta amyloid deposits have long been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, the pharmaceutical industry has lacked an obvious target to prevent such deposits. Last week, Amgen Inc. went public with its identification of a protein likely to be the beta-secretase enzyme, which is believed to be involved in the formation of beta amyloid. AMGN thus may have its target, although it is not clear whether it has a leg up on the competition.

AMGN's finding may provide an Alzheimer's target amenable to traditional drug discovery technologies that have produced other protease inhibitors. "We are going to look for small molecule inhibitors of this enzyme and test those in transgenic mouse models of plaque formation," said Martin Citron, AMGN researcher and corresponding author on the Science paper...