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Written transcript located below the video.
Week of March 2 - March 8, 2008
TRANSCRIPT:
Jessica: "Tonight, the breakthrough that could protect your family from Alzheimer's Disease. An Oklahoma City medical team is now working on a vaccination. Tyler Suiters is here now with our big story. Tyler? "
Tyler: " Jessica, this is obviously a very complex process, but I spoke with the leader of that team today, Dr. Jordan Tang, and he uses these 'scissors' to show you exactly how this works."
(Mr. Suiters points to a picture of dangling strands behind him.)
"This (the scissors) is an enzyme that is in our body and these are strands of protein. The scissors cuts off strands and what is left behind becomes plaque. That's what builds up in our brains and leads to Alzheimer's. His drug, however, would stop the scissors right in their tracks, no protein strands are cut, and you are better protected from Alzheimer's."
"And now this team inside an Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation lab is trying to perfect that technique, using your own body as protection. "
Dr. Tang: "We say that OK, this pair of scissors we need to control. How about waking up the body's defense system to make antibodies against this. This way you could use the body's defense abilities to knock down the activity of this 'pair of scissors.' "
Tyler: "Dr. Tang and his team have been working on this concept for four years now, finding one challenge after another, posed by what our bodies naturally do."
Dr. Tyler: "You cannot easily use a human protein to wake up the human defense system and recognize the 'scissors' as a 'bad guy' in order to respond to it. So we have to mix it with another ingredient."
Tyler: "And that ingredient, dead bacteria cells, could be a key to triggering the vaccine. Still, Dr. Tang tells me his team has at least two more years of work like this before even a clinical trial can get underway."
Dr. Tang: "The vaccine itself is a human protein and when we put it in humans, we are worried about an autoimmune response, so we have to minimize that."
Tyler: "Who knew scissors could solve such big problems, huh?"
"Well, just to show you how good this research really is, Dr. Tang told me that the four years his team spent researching this involved testing mice in various stages. Since the mice need a 10 month aging cycle, the doctors had to wait almost a whole year each time they could tinker with them, each time obviously with good results."
For general information on Alzheimer's Disease, take a look at the Alzheimer's Association website.
A related Alzheimer's Weekly article about this vaccine:
The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (omrf.org) is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute dedicated to understanding and developing more effective treatments for human disease. Its scientists focus on such critical research areas as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, lupus and cardiovascular disease.Source:
Bylines:
Edited By Peter Berger, Alzheimer's Weekly
Reviewed for medical accuracy by
Dr. B. Ancselovits, MD, Geriatrician, Alzheimer's Weekly
