Japanese researchers successfully treat ALS using antiepileptic drugs

The research team at the University of Tokyo in Japan announced on June 29, 2016 that they successfully developed new therapy of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Professor Guo Shen at International Healthcare Medical Research Center and special researcher Akamatsu at School of Medicine of Tokyo University et al established a joint research group. Concrete results had been published in the British famous science journal Scientific Reports on June 28. And we also hope that other research using recombinant mouse proteins and recombinant rat proteins can benefit the development of new therapy.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a disease happens after motor neuron damage which makes the muscles of limbs, trunk and other parts gradually become weak and atrophy. In several years of getting the disease, healthy people will gradually gain muscle atrophy of whole body and dysphagia, and finally die caused by respiratory failure. There haven't yet developed an effective treatment to slow the course of disease.

The team confirmed in previous studies that the activity decrease of enzyme ADAR2 will result in excessive cellular calcium influx, which has a correlation with motoneuron death of sporadic ALS patients. The team specially developed conditional mice (AR2 mice) with ADAR2 gene knockout which had sporadic ALS symptoms knockout mice and medicated consecutive 90 days of administration of antiepileptic drugs Fycompa. Fycompa has the function of excessive intracellular calcium flow. This study confirmed that the drug can inhibit neurological motor neuron defects, thereby inhibiting the decline of motor function. In addition, the drug can also restore local anomaly in special TDP-43 protein cells in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The effect had also been confirmed on mice with aggravating symptoms.

Fycompa is an antiepileptic drug which is widely used around the world, and a small dose of medication in mice has shown obvious effectiveness at this time. Experts predict that its difficulty of human clinical trials is not high, and they also look forward to officially developing new therapy of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Flarebio also offers other recombinant proteins such as recombinant INSR, and people who are interested can have a look.