Approaching late onset Alzheimer's

Two newly reported approaches to Alzheimer's disease appear to directly target the underlying mechanism of the disease. The two new targets, neprilysin and humanin, are likely to be complementary to the secretase inhibitors currently in clinical trials and would be applicable to the more common late onset form of AD was well as the rarer early onset forms.

As with many poorly understood diseases, much of the work on Alzheimer's has focused on the rarer types of cases that run in families, as scientists search for genes associated with the disease. As a result, genes known to be involved in the etiology of AD include APP, PS-1 and PS-2, but these only account for up to 10% of early onset cases. One allele of Apolipoprotein, ApoE4, is known to be associated with 50-90% of late onset cases, but the mechanism by which ApoE4 leads to AD is not known...