New Drug Shows Promise Growing Brain Cells

Alzheimer’s patients, brain injury patients, and dementia sufferers may benefit from a newly discovered pill that grows brain cells. The drug, currently labeled P7C3 while it undergoes continued study, appears to provide a safe and effective option that helps support developing brain cells to become viable.

Testing done on rats demonstrated that the older rats who had been dosed with P7C3 were capable of learning their way through a maze when other rats, who had not received the drug, could not. The researchers hope the drug can be used to increase the effectiveness of Alzheimer’s drugs like Dimebon, which recently failed in clinical trials.

“For the sake of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, it is hoped that the apparently marginal clinical utility of Dimebon might be enhanced by improvements in both its potency and ceiling of proneurogenic, neuroprotective efficacy,” the researchers wrote. “If so, our work offers concrete assays for the development of improved versions of these neuroprotective drugs.”

More than 25 million people currently suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, which is a progressive disease that destroys the brain until autonomic functions cease and the sufferer dies. P7C3 represents a hopeful breakthrough in research that could lend itself to other areas of brain trauma treatment, including helping people with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute on Mental Health, said, “This striking demonstration of a treatment that stems age-related cognitive decline in living animals points the way to potential development of the first cures that will address the core illness process in Alzheimer’s disease.” The National Institute on Mental Health helped fund the study.

The rats that were treated with the drug had three times as many developing brain cells. Researchers have since used P7C3 to create a derivative drug called A20 that shows even more promise. When the derivative was combined with Dimebon and Sereno, two test-phase Alzheimer treatments, it caused new brain cell growth stimulation.

Shadra Bruce is a contributing writer for Mental Health News.