An old Ver­tex drug gets new life as an Alzheimer's treat­ment, but hu­man stud­ies still far off

If you give a mouse a tar­get­ed en­zyme in­hibitor, will its cog­ni­tive de­cline slow down?

That’s what re­searchers from McGill Uni­ver­si­ty and the La­dy Davis In­sti­tute in Mon­tre­al are ask­ing, and the an­swer could be yes. Led by An­dréa LeBlanc, the team demon­strat­ed a link be­tween an old Ver­tex drug, VX-765, and de­layed cog­ni­tive im­pair­ment pri­or to the on­set of Alzheimer’s symp­toms and ag­ing in mice. The re­sults of the study were pub­lished in a pa­per in Na­ture Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing.

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