Roskamp scientists make major Alzheimer's finding

MANATEE COUNTY — Scientists at the Roskamp Institute, a biomedical research nonprofit that studies diseases of the mind, isolated a key molecule that gives researchers a new drug target in the quest to cure Alzheimer's disease.

The discovery, the culmination of at least 10 years work by more than a dozen scientists, was published Oct. 20 in the online edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. It's scheduled for the print edition in December, according to a release.

“These findings are really significant,” University of California Irvine research professor David Cribbs says in the release. Cribbs is also associate director of the Institute for Memory Impairment and Neurological Disorders at UCI. “With all of the failures of the clinical trials of drugs for this dementia up to this point the finding of new therapeutics is wonderful.”