Cancer drug may have Alzheimer’s benefits

Medication helps brain clear plaque-forming protein

A cancer drug that sweeps an ominous plaque-forming protein from mouse brains within hours and reverses Alzheimer’s-like behavior in the rodents in days may offer a powerful new way to prevent or even reverse the brain-wasting disease in humans.

The brain of a 6-month-old mouse (left) engineered to have an Alzheimer’s-like disease accumulates A-beta plaques (red) around brain cells (blue).