Public release date: 16-Aug-2007

BETHESDA, Md. – Scientists have shown that recently developed mouse breeds that mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may not be as effective as previously assumed. Sascha Weggen, Professor of Molecular Neuropathology at Heinrich-Heine-University, Duesseldorf, Germany; lead author Eva Czirr, Ph.D. student at the University of Mainz, Germany; and colleagues show in the August 24 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry that in some mouse breeds, drugs that had been shown to reduce levels of a toxic protein called amyloid beta had only minor or no effect on these mice.

“Testing drugs against AD on animals is not easy because animals don’t develop the disease,” Weggen says. “When using mice, scientists need to artificially induce one or several mutations in the mice and check whether they develop symptoms of the disease that are similar to the human ones. We showed that some of the mice currently bred to develop the disease don’t get better when they receive previously tested drugs.”