Korean researchers develop 1st new substance for Alzheimer's

increases the possibility of treating dementia by activating mitochondrial function

A Korean research team has developed a new substance (ALT001) that promotes mitophagy, and the recycling of damaged mitochondria, and presented a new door to treating Alzheimer's type dementia.

 

The Korea Health Industry Development Institute (President: Soon-Do Cho) announced that a joint research team that consists of Jin-ho Yoon (College of Medicine, Dong-A University), Jong-Hyun Cho (Department of Medicinal Biotechnology, College of Health Sciences, Dong-A University), Ji-Hoon Jo (Chonnam National University), and Alt Medical (CEO: Eun-Hee Yoo) has succeeded in developing a new mitophagy promoting substance (ALT001) that can treat Alzheimer's type dementia.

 

Summary of ALT001

ALT001 demonstrated low toxicity and safety that does not interfere with cell growth.

 

Also, animal testing in vivo showed that the substance effectively improved damaged cognitive function, proving its value as a clinically applicable treatment substance for dementia.

 

Previously, most studies for the treatment of Alzheimer's type dementia had focused on amyloid beta and tau proteins, but recent study results showed that mitochondrial dysfunction plays an important role in the development of dementia by interacting with amyloid beta, and promoting the mitophagy process that maintains mitochondrial function has been attracting attention as a new treatment strategy.

 

However, due to the absence of mitophagy-promoting substances with proven clinical applicability, dementia treatment through mitophagy has not been implemented in practice.

 

To improve this situation, the joint research team conducted a chemical library screening using an in-house mitophagy activity analysis system.

 

Through the screening, the research team identified an isoquinolium scaffold for mitophagy induction and generated ALT001 through chemical optimization of the isoquinolium scaffold.

 

ALT001 effectively promotes mitophagy and is safe as it does not interfere with cell growth, demonstrating its clinical applicability.

 

The result of an experiment conducted to evaluate the learning and memory ability when using ALT001 for Alzheimer's type dementia in mouse models showed surprising results, where the learning and memory ability of the dementia mouse model was restored, and this therapeutic effect was also identified in a mouse model widely used in other dementia research.

 

Professor Jin-ho Yoon, who led the research, said, “Thanks to the national support and helping hands, we researchers in Korea were able to develop a dementia treatment substance that can be clinically applied in the highly competitive mitophagy-based treatment development field.

 

We are very grateful for the support.

 

Our research will allow the development of a mitophagy-based dementia treatment that has been difficult to commercialize due to the lack of a drug with defined molecular mechanisms.

 

We will devote ourselves to follow-up research with the goal of commercializing a dementia treatment using the results of this research.” The study was conducted with the support of the Korea Dementia Research Center, and its results were published in Theranostics, a world-renowned academic journal ranked among the top 5.8% in the field of medical research.