Vaccines are arguably one of the greatest inventions of medical science of all time.
Vaccines are arguably one of the greatest inventions of medical science of all time. Now, researchers are looking to take vaccine technology one step further to protect against neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. In this Special Feature, we asked experts about what is currently under development, how a dementia vaccine would work, and how quickly we may see one becoming available to the public.
Dementia is an umbrella term referring to a range of disorders that affect the way in which a person’s brain works, causing symptoms including memory loss, behavior changes, and difficulty speakingTrusted Source and walking.
The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60% to 80% of dementia cases.
More than 55 millionTrusted Source people around the world have dementia, with about 10 million cases added each year.
There are some Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs for Alzheimer’s disease aimed at either changing disease progression or helping lower some symptoms of the condition. However, there is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s disease or most cases of dementia.
Is a dementia vaccine even possible?
Researchers are now looking at the possibility of protecting a person from developing dementia through a vaccine.
Traditional vaccines, such as vaccines for the flu and shingles, train the body’s immune system to fight off specific viral infections.
“More and more, there’s an appreciation of the immune system being relevant in the central nervous system, both in terms of driving a disease state, but also potentially recovering from or even preventing a disease from happening, including something as complex and devastating as dementia,” said Dr. David A. Merrill, a psychiatrist, and director of the Pacific Neuroscience Institute’s Pacific Brain Health Center at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA.
He gave the example of recent evidence showing a person getting the flu or pneumonia vaccine might decrease their risk of developing dementia.
“It’s spurring the idea ‘could immune system activation or support actually help stave off the dementing process or nerve degenerative disease process?’,” Dr. Merrill continued.
“The starting point of the theories or hypotheses about Alzheimer’s didn’t start with ideas about the immune system, but it’s ending up that perhaps the treatments can and should involve helping or addressing immune system function with aging,” he told us.
What would a dementia vaccine do?
According to Dr. Michael G. Agadjanyan, vice president and professor of immunology at The Institute for Molecular Medicine in Huntington Beach, CA, vaccines against neurodegenerative disordersTrusted Source are like subunit vaccinesTrusted Source — using only a piece of the pathogen — and recombinant vaccinesTrusted Source using DNA technology to raise antibodies against the most immunogenic peptide segments.
Dr. Heather Snyder, vice president of medical and scientific relations for the Alzheimer’s Association, said it is an exciting time in Alzheimer’s disease research, with over 100 potential therapies being tested at various stages of the research process, and many more being developed.
“There has been some research exploring active immunization, such as vaccines, to ‘protect’ individuals from Alzheimer’s,” she detailed. “These are vaccines that are being developed to target the biology related to Alzheimer’s.”
“They are, in some cases, leveraging the biology of decades of vaccine-related development more broadly in medical care. There are also different types of delivery systems and different types of biology that may be targeted with a vaccine for a potential therapy,” she explained.
Dr. Agadjanyan explained that dementia vaccines would generate immune responses against pathological molecules in the body associated with dementia, including:
beta-amyloidTrusted Source proteins — toxic build-up of these proteins in the brain is often linked to Alzheimer’s disease
tauTrusted Source — a protein that helps stabilize the internal structure of neurons in the brain; abnormal tangles of tau protein in the brain are associated with Alzheimer’s disease
alpha-synucleinTrusted Source — a protein in neurons associated with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia when large amounts accumulate.
“In Alzheimer’s disease, the following processes develop in the brain tissues,” Dr. Agadjanyan explained to Medical News Today.
“[Beta-amyloid] plaques are formed from beta-amyloid protein. Inside the neurons of the brain, neurofibrillary tangles are formed from hyperphosphorylated tau protein. These accumulations of beta-amyloid and tau protein lead to the destruction of neurons and the development of inflammatory processes,” he said.
“As a result, neurons and the connections between them vanish, and memories, the ability to create them, and other human cognitive functions — thinking, the ability to concentrate on a task, logic, etc. — go with them,” he continued. “After a person receives a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, they rarely manage to spend more than five to seven years in this world.”
Dr. Agadjanyan said that current scientific data suggest that aggregation of beta-amyloid is the critical feature for initiating Alzheimer’s disease followed by accumulation of pathological tau and, downstream, inflammation, oxidative stress, and neurodegeneration.
Dementia vaccines under development
A number of dementia vaccines are currently in different stages of clinical trials to study their effectiveness and safety, including:
a nasal Alzheimer’s disease vaccine from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston entered the phase 1 clinical trial stage in November 2021
a phase 2 clinical trial is underway for Araclon Biotech’s Alzheimer’s disease vaccine targeting beta-amyloid 40Trusted Source
Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company AC Immune SA has a tau-targeted vaccine candidate for Alzheimer’s disease in a phase 1B/ 2A clinical trial.
Earlier this year, pharmaceutical company Vaxxinity announced it had received FDA fast-track designationTrusted Source for its immunotherapeutic vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease. The vaccine candidate, UB-311, has completed phase 1 and 2A clinical trials, with phase 2B expected to begin in late 2022.
Dr. Snyder reported that the Alzheimer’s Association’s Part the Cloud program is currently funding an early-phase clinical trial testing the use of a vaccine in reducing brain inflammation in individuals with early Alzheimer’s disease. She stated that the trial is expected to finalize in fall 2023.
And Dr. Agadjanyan is part of a team at The Institute for Molecular Medicine (IMM) developing a vaccineTrusted Source for Alzheimer’s disease.
“Our goal was to develop an immunogenic vaccine that can induce a sufficient level of antibodies in the periphery of all vaccinated cognitively unimpaired elderly with immunosenescence and delay/ halt the onset of Alzheimer’s disease,” he explained.
