The National Institute of Aging (NIA) recently awarded co-investigators Masashi Kitazawa, PhD, associate professor of environmental & occupational health at the UCI Program in Public Health and Lulu Chen, PhD, assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the UCI School of Medicine, a five-year, multi-center grant to develop a new genetically engineered bacterial biologic L-DOPA to treat the most common early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
AD is a slowly progressive neurodegenerative disorder that usually manifests with deterioration of cognitive functions such as memory, language, judgment, and reasoning. No effective drug exists to dampen the specific brain proteins associated with AD progression. Current FDA-approved neurotherapeutics are modest at best in rescuing memory in mild cognitive impairment and early stages of AD cases. Many drugs actually worsen anxiety, apathy, depression, agitation, and other neurobehavioral symptoms, GI irritations, and even mortality. With no cure for AD today, researchers are diligently working to improve care and quality of life for all those affected.
This project’s unique therapeutic pipeline strategy has the ability to change how we provide clinical care. Our interdisciplinary collaboration can accelerate the translational impact of our research in the AD field.”
– Masashi Kitazawa, PhD
The project aims to optimize a treatment option of using a common bacteria that resides in the gut to restore brain inputs that can alleviate cognitive and behavioral deficits and ultimately delay disease onset. Using mouse models, Kitazawa and Chen will investigate the probiotic’s ability to relieve AD symptoms without additional side effects. Researchers expect that the delivery of L-DOPA bacterial live- therapeutics (LDBL) should produce better results than the current treatment of chronic pulsatile delivery that causes severe side effects.
“This project’s unique therapeutic pipeline strategy has the ability to change how we provide clinical care,” says Kitazawa. “Our interdisciplinary collaboration can accelerate the translational impact of our research in the AD field.”
