ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — University of New Mexico researchers have what they believe is a way to prevent Alzheimer's disease, according to one local news report.
KRQE reported that UNM Health and Sciences associate professor Kiran Bhaskar has been studying the disease for a decade.
Bhaskar started the idea for a vaccine in 2013, and his team started to test it on mice.
"We used a group of mice that have Alzheimer's Disease, and we injected them over a series of injections," Ph.D. student Nicole Maphis told KRQE.
Maphis said the vaccine was made to combat pathological tau, a protein typically found in a brain with Alzheimer’s.
"These antibodies seem to have cleared pathological tau. Pathological tau is one of the components of these tangles that we find in the brains of patients with Alzheimers disease," Maphis said.
According to Maphis, mice with the vaccine performed better in maze-like tests than those without.
The test is not a definitive indicator of the vaccine being the cure. Maphis and Bhaskar are looking or partnerships to test a small group on a clinical grade of the vaccine, KRQE reported. It would cost the department $2 million.