IIT Guwahati researchers develop new ways to prevent memory loss due to Alzheimer's

A team of researchers at IIT Guwahati has developed some new ways that can help prevent or reduce short-term memory losses associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati has announced that a team of researchers at the institute has come up with new ways that can help prevent or reduce short-term memory losses associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The research team has explored new ways to prevent the accumulation of neurotoxic molecules in the brain that are associated with short-term memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease.

They reported some methods such as the application of low-voltage electric field and the use of ‘trojan peptides’ to arrest aggregation of neurotoxic molecules in the brain.

The idea of using ‘Trojan peptide’ comes from mythological “Trojan Horse” used as subterfuge by the Greeks in the battle of ‘Troy’.

For a country like India, which has the third-highest number of Alzheimer’s patients in the world, after China and US, the development of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is important.

"Approximately a hundred potential drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease have failed between 1998 and 2011, which shows the gravity of the problem,” lead researcher Vibin Ramakrishnan, Professor, Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Guwahati, said in a statement.

A defining hallmark of Alzheimer’s is the accumulation of Amyloid beta peptides in the brain. The research team seeks methods to reduce the accumulation of these peptides, in order to arrest the progression of Alzheimer’s.

In 2019, the IIT-G researchers found that the application of a low-voltage, the safe electrical field can reduce the formation and accumulation of toxic neurodegenerative molecules that cause short-term memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease.

They found that the external electric/magnetic field modulates the structure of these peptide molecules, thereby preventing aggregation.

“Upon exposure to an electric field, we could retard the degeneration of nerve cells to an extent of 17–35 per cent. This would translate to about 10 years delay in the onset of the disease,” said Ramakrishnan.

The researchers worked on this developed and explored the possibility of using ‘Trojan peptides’ to arrest the aggregation of these neurotoxic molecules.