As per a new study, adults over 55 years fear Alzheimer’s disease more than the dreaded cancer, and with good reasons. The fact that there are no effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease only adds to their agony.

But now, there have been suggestions from the Georgetown University that spirostenols, which is a new class of Anti-Alzheimer’s disease, can prove to be effective for undoing characteristic pathophysiology of Alzheimer-affected brains. It was further suggested after more clinical tests that Caprospinol (SP-233), which is one such molecule, can actually reverse the course of an Alzheimer-like disease induced in rats.

From News-Medical.Net:

Buildup of beta-amyloid plaque in the brain has been recognized as a hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s for close to a century. Significant research points to this buildup as a causative factor in the development and progression of the disease. Until recently this hypothesis could not be tested definitively because of a lack of treatments that eliminate beta-amyloid plaques.

Samaritan Pharmaceutical scientists, working with leading researchers from Georgetown and McGill Universities, have demonstrated in a rat animal model, used to test new innovative drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, that Caprospinol clears amyloid plaque from the brain and restored memory. More impressively, treated rats perform as well or better in standardized behavioral tests than healthy control animals. In addition to eliminating plaque, Caprospinol appears to reverse the damage to memory and cognition that amyloid plaque causes.

Dr. Vassilios Papadopoulos, of McGill University Health Center, an adviser to Samaritan, and the discoverer of anti-Alzheimer’s spirostenols recently published a paper reviewing current development-stage approaches to treating Alzheimer’s disease (Recent Patents on CNS Drug Discovery, 2007, 2, 113-123). In this article, he identified amyloid plaque as a key target for therapy. The paper also summarized the research on acetylcholinesterase inhibitors as well as beta-amyloid aggregation inhibitors, of which Caprospinol is an example.

Caprospinol, which is a steroid, has now got the go-ahead from the FDA for testing on humans. It is believed to cause no unexpected interactions with other medications that may be taken by an Alzheimer patient.

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