Doctor Francisco Lopera And A New Way To Treat Alzheimer’s

Currently in the world there are five major investigations that seek drugs to treat Alzheimer’s. Four of them take place in the United States and one in Colombia. The latter is directed by Dr. Francisco Lopera, who has been studying this disease for more than 30 years and has made amazing advances.

The difference between the work of Dr. Francisco Lopera and that of other researchers is the fact that, partly by chance  and partly by arduous search, he found a new way to tackle the disease. A path that has to do with genetic peculiarities that he found in one of his patients.

Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia that causes great suffering  to those who suffer from it and their families. The progressive loss of memory and of different functions is equivalent to a slow death of identity, of life projects, of being. Many people in the world hope, if not a cure, then at least a more effective treatment than the current ones.

The research path of Dr. Francisco Lopera

Dr. Francisco Lopera directs an investigation  in which he has had the collaboration of the National Institute of Health of the United States, the Banner Institute, the Genentech company, and, more recently, with experts from the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Schepens Institute of Ocular Research. The center of his work is at the University of Antioquia (Colombia).

He spent a lot of time trying to develop a treatment for Alzheimer’s. Important advances were made, but the drugs that are on the market are limited. For the same reason, for some years now, research has focused on prevention  rather than cure.

At the moment, there are  increasingly accurate early detection methods. However, these are sophisticated procedures that for now are not available to anyone, but are only used in research groups. It is probable that in the short term we will all have them available, which would represent a great advance.

A different way

Dr. Francisco Lopera has found a new avenue for research and, probably, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. It all started in 1984, when he was a neurology resident. A patient came to his office who was only 47 years old and was already in the advanced stage of the disease.   As he delved into his case, he learned that this patient’s father, grandfather, and uncles had also been through the same thing.

This led him to make a genealogy of this family and thus found the first family group with a hereditary form of Alzheimer’s. Later, as a researcher, he found two other families with the same characteristics. After 11 years of that first finding, his work group verified that it was indeed Alzheimer’s and that in this case the disease was due to a gene mutation.

Years went by and new cases appeared. In all of them, they found the same characteristic. They called it “paisa mutation”, because there were no other references in the world of it. However, the truly exceptional had not yet occurred.

New Horizons

Dr. Lopera explains that in Alzheimer’s there is a kind of accumulation of “garbage” in the brain. It is made up of a protein called amyloid. The fragments of this stick together and form something like a “glob” that sticks to neurons and causes a cascade of failures. The other part of “junk” is tau, which envelops the neuron, encloses it, and kills it. Tau is more harmful.

Now, one of the patients that Dr. Francisco Lopera treated was part of one of the families that had the mutation and she herself presented it. However, unlike all her relatives, she did not develop the disease early, but the first symptoms did not appear until she was 70 years old. It was a completely exceptional case and that’s why the studies focused on her.

After careful studies in Boston, experts found that the patient’s brain was full of amyloid, even more than in other cases. However, it had very little tau. The investigations allowed them to verify that in this patient there was another mutation that inhibited the production of tau and, with this, delayed the progression of the disease.

The finding was published in the journal Nature Medicine and opened a new horizon for researchers. It is believed that from the information collected with that patient, a gene therapy could be done, that is, something like replicating her genetic information in other people. The possibility of developing a drug that mimics the mechanism of the protective mutation would also be considered.