Cancer Drug could Improve Memory, work for Alzheimer’s Patients

Scientists have proven that an anti-cancer drug called RGFP966 has the potential to assist Alzheimer’s patients by boosting memory and strengthening neurons. It was conducted by Rutgers University. They also learned that the lab rats remembered music, and were “tuned in” to certain acoustic signals.

More importantly, the drug might help address symptoms associated with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, the specialists propose.

Could a cancer drug actually make your memory sharper?

The drug helped rats retain more data, be more receptive to new information and sounds, and create new brain connections that stored fresh memories in the brain.

Reminiscence-making in neurological situations like Alzheimer’s illness is commonly poor or absent altogether as soon as an individual is within the superior levels of the illness, mentioned lead creator Kasia M. Bieszczad, including that this drug may rescue the flexibility to make new reminiscences which are wealthy intimately and content material, even within the worst case eventualities.

The drug, RGFP966, being tested on rats, is a HDAC inhibitor which is now used in a few cancer therapies.

Researchers have found that a drug used in cancer therapy could also sharpen memory and help those with dementia by rewiring the brain and keeping neurons alive.

Their findings appear in the Journal of Neuroscience.

People who suffer from Alzheimer or other forms of dementia, their brain cells begin to shrink and die as the synapses that are responsible for transferring information from one neuron to the next lose their strength.

Ms Bieszczad, assistant professor at the Rutgers University, said the type of therapeutic treatment will help in future for those who are learning to speak again after injury or disease, or it may help in reversing the previous deafness.

This enhanced ability to process sounds made the neurons in the rats’ brains better able to reorganize and create new pathways, so that more of the information they learned could become a long-term memory, according to the researchers. It enables information to be more easily processed and stored as a memory, so that it can be used later on when carrying out everyday activities.

Bieszczad explained that people only remember certain details of an experience, and forget a few things that are seen, heard, or felt. “What has happened here is that memory becomes closer to a snapshot of the actual experience instead of being sparse, limited or inaccurate”, she said.