A Vaccine for Alzheimer’s

The numbers are stark: Nearly 7 million Americans over age 65 are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and that figure is projected to almost double by 2050 as the population continues to age.

It’s a heartbreaking disease, robbing people of their memories and self-sufficiency, and even altering personalities. Treatments thus far have focused on symptom management and have made only modest gains.

But now there is a promising new treatment in the works. Researchers at the University at Buffalo are developing an immunotherapy-based vaccine that in early studies has shown remarkable potential to slow or even reverse disease progression.

The vaccine, developed by Jonathan Lovell, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in UB’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, targets multiple sites within key parts of the two main disease hallmarks of Alzheimer’s: amyloid-beta (Aβ) and tau.

In an Alzheimer’s patient, amyloid plaques, made of mainly Aβ, build up outside brain cells, while tangles of the protein tau form inside brain cells. Together, they affect memory, the ability to find words, work with numbers, make decisions and follow familiar routes and directions.

The immunotherapy concept developed by Lovell and his team includes epitopes (the parts of the proteins the immune system can recognize) of both Aβ and tau. “By targeting multiple epitopes simultaneously,” said Lovell, “we aim to train the immune system to recognize and attack these problematic proteins more broadly.”

Experiments in mice that have been genetically modified to develop a condition similar to Alzheimer’s have been promising.

“What we’ve found is that the mice that received the immunotherapy early showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s-related brain damage and performed better on cognitive tests,” said Lovell. “The vaccine appears safe and didn’t cause unwanted side effects.”

Lovell first began working on this immunotherapy concept over five years ago. Now his lab regularly sends different iterations of the vaccine to researchers at the Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities—a New York State research entity that has been studying Alzheimer’s for over 40 years—to test on the mice.

While they originally administered the vaccine early on, before the mice developed significant dementia symptoms, they’re now testing it on older mice with the disease to see how they fare.

If all goes well, Lovell predicts human trials could become a reality in the next few years.

“Alzheimer’s is such a devastating disease,” said Lovell, “that we need bold solutions to address it.”