Mother and daughter team are close to discovering a vaccine for Alzheimer's
A mother and daughter have worked together to start a biotech company that has developed what could be the world’s first Alzheimer’s vaccine.
Dr. Chang Yi Wang, Ph.D. is a prolific bio-inventor who teamed up with her daughter Mei Mei Hu and son-in-law Louis Reese to create United Neuroscience four years ago.
Mei Mei urged her mother to focus all of her efforts on working on an Alzheimer’s vaccine through the company.
In January, 2019, United Neuroscience Inc announced the first promising results from a pilot clinical trial on an Alzheimer’s vaccine called UB-311 in 42 human patients.
“We were able to generate some antibodies in all patients, which is unusual for vaccines,” Yi tells Wired.
“We’re talking about almost a 100 percent response rate. So far, we have seen an improvement in three out of three measurements of cognitive performance for patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease.”
The vaccine contains synthetic versions of amino acid chains that trigger the antibodies to attack Alzheimer’s protein in the blood.
What makes this vaccine different is that it attacks the protein without any side effects.
According to Yi’s research team, the vaccine can delay the onset of the disease by five years.
“You’d want to see larger numbers, but this looks like a beneficial treatment,” Aston University Research Centre for Healthy Ageing director James Brown was quoted as saying, according to NextShark.
“This looks like a silver bullet that can arrest or improve symptoms and, if it passes the next phase, it could be the best chance we’ve got.”
Photo credit: Wired, Benedict Evans