Nasal Spray Could Delay Alzheimer's by Years

An anti-Alzheimer's nasal spray that could delay the progress of the disease by years has been developed by scientists at Texas A&M University College of Medicine. Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, and the leading cause of death among those aged 65 or older and afflicts nearly 7 million Americans. "The current focus is on slowing mental decline by 10-15 years through early intervention or intermittent interventions, ideally starting right after an Alzheimer's diagnosis," said Professor Ashok Shetty, university distinguished researcher at Texas A&M who led the research effort, speaking to Newsweek. Shetty's lab is also investigating whether their approach can help people already diagnosed with the disease, where Alzheimer's may have progressed. The idea to develop a nasal spray for Alzheimer's arose from efforts by the Texas A&M scientists over a number of years to find a non-invasive way to deliver medicines derived from stem cells to the entire brain. This is a treatment strategy the researchers considered critical for conditions like Alzheimer's that impact multiple regions of the brain. The spray was found to decrease damaging inflammation in the brain as well as reducing the buildup of plaques and abnormal proteins, characteristic of the disease, in new research reported in the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.

"Nasal sprays containing nanosized extracellular vesicles derived from stem cells can rapidly penetrate the brain," said Shetty. "These vesicles deliver multiple therapeutic molecules to different types of brain cells, helping to either protect them or induce beneficial changes in their gene expression, which may help slow down mental decline." The focus of research to date has taken place using an animal model of Alzheimer's disease, but the researchers believe that translation to humans is possible. The next step is to produce medicines from nervous system stem cells suitable for human clinical trials. Meanwhile, an anti-Alzheimer's nasal spray product that is widely available to the public remains several years away researchers say. Reference Madhu, L. N., Kodali, M., Upadhya, R., Rao, S., Somayaji, Y., Attaluri, S., Shuai, B., Kirmani, M., Gupta, S., Maness, N., Rao, X., Cai, J. J., & Shetty, A. K. (2024).
Extracellular vesicles from human‐induced pluripotent stem cell‐derived neural stem cells alleviate proinflammatory cascades within disease‐associated microglia in Alzheimer's disease https://doi.org/10.1002/jev2.12519