Brussels sprouts could offer an answer to treating Alzheimer's – the most common reason for dementia. A supercharged form of the acid derived from our Christmas dinner veg may be the foundation of new research aimed at creating a new drug to deal with the progressive brain disease.
Experts at the University of Aberdeen are working on the synthetic version of the beneficial acid made from vitamin A – a vitamin the body can get from eating numerous vegetables, including carrots and Brussels sprouts – that they hope may be used to treat neurological disorders.
In your body, vit a is converted into retinoic acid, which in turn interacts with specific receptors within the brain and plays a role in the introduction of the human central nervous system. It's particularly important for that eye and brain as the embryo is developing.
In the adult brain, it's thought retinoic acid plays another, more 'focussed' role and there are suggestions it might affect neural disorders, both degenerative and psychiatric.
Now, University of Aberdeen experts, with the University of Durham and chemical development company High Force Research are going to begin a new 2 year, lb250,000 project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
The researchers have designed synthetic versions of retinoic acid that interact with the body's natural receptors within the brain in an even more powerful way than regular retinoic acid.
The team hope to progress the research to build up therapeutics – primarily for Alzheimer's but potentially Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Another unique part of the Aberdeen-led study may be the method accustomed to screen the brand new synthetic compounds making the procedure more effective.
With the cost of drug discovery rising and also the time to develop new drugs increasing, this new process is yet another important factor that contributed to the project being identified for more funding.
Professor Peter McCaffery, who is leading the work said: \”We are simply trying to create a massively amplified form of what vitamin A already does for that body. By exploiting the natural consequences of retinoic acid by creating a synthetic alternative, hopefully so that you can create a new therapeutic that could be employed to help individuals with Alzheimer's disease.
\”There are other projects of a similar nature but they're focussed on several receptors and we're confident that our compound will prove to be more successful. Additionally, our unique screening process is an exciting innovation which should boost the efficiency of the process and could have implications beyond this particular project.\”
Professor McCaffery will work alongside Dr Iain Greig and Professor Bettina Platt in the University of Aberdeen and Professor Andrew Whiting from the University of Durham.