The team at King’s College London believe they have “the most detailed picture yet” of the chain reaction of events that causes brain cells to die because of Alzheimer’s.
They have even begun testing potential drugs to see if they can stop the process that leads to the cells dying, said academics at KCL's Institute of Psychiatry.
Experts have known for years that Alzheimer’s is closely associated with a build-up of plaques between brain cells, which are made up of deposits of a molecule called amyloid.
These lead to the formation of tangles of twisted fibres of another substance, called tau, inside the cells, which cause these cells to die.
More recently they found that a third molecule called clusterin, found in people with people even with early stage Alzheimer’s, is involved.
Now the King’s College team has discovered that clusterin acts as a biochemical ‘switch’, that drives the changes in tau that kill brain cells and hence trigger Alzheimer’s.
Dr Richard Killick of the institute said: “Our research has given the most detailed picture yet of how the disease progresses and we hope it will offer leads for the development of new treatments.”
His colleague Professor Simon Lovestone, who led the study, said: “We have shown that we can block the toxic effects of amyloid when we stop this signalling pathway in brain cells grown in the lab.
“We believe that if we could block its activity in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients too, we may have an opportunity to halt the disease in man.
“Indeed, we have already begun our own drug development programme to do just that and are at the stage where potential compounds are coming back to us for further testing.”
The study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, has been mainly funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Alzheimer’s Society, BUPA foundation and Alzheimer’s Research UK.
Professor Clive Ballard, director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “The more we understand about the way Alzheimer’s develops the better placed we are to treat it.
“This important study fills in some critical gaps regarding the complex way Alzheimer’s takes hold and could lead us towards a new way of diagnosing, targeting and treating the condition more effectively.”