“MIT Scholar and Xingda Alumnus Discovers Breakthrough Method to Reverse Alzheimer’s Disease”

(Central News Service 20230421 09:48:19) Li-Huei Tsai, a scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an alumnus of the Department of Veterinary Medicine of Chung Hsing University, is an expert in the field of brain research. Recently, the team published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “(PNAS) published a breakthrough study to find a new method to “reverse” Alzheimer’s disease, which has attracted high attention in the international academic circle. The American academic circle even believes that Cai Lihui has the potential to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in the future.

Cai Lihui is currently a professor of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an academician of the American Academy of Sciences. Alzheimer’s disease. Cai Lihui graduated from the Department of Veterinary Medicine of Chung Hsing University in 1982, and then obtained a master’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin. In 1990, she obtained a doctorate in virology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

The teachers and students of Xingxing University are very excited about the important research published by Academician Cai this time. President Xue Fusheng of Chung Hsing University will also send a letter to express his congratulations, and invite Academician Cai to give a special speech when he returns to his alma mater in Taiwan in the future. President Xue said that Taiwan’s higher education is absolutely capable of cultivating excellent forward-looking research talents.

Lihui Cai’s team used peptides, also known as peptides, to interfere with enzymes that are normally overactive in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The compound stops an enzyme called CDK5 from becoming overactive, which can damage nerves and lead to cognitive decline. Cai Lihui said, “The effect of this peptide is very significant; it has seen miraculous effects in reducing nerve tissue degeneration and neuroinflammation, and even rescuing behavioral defects.” After further experiments, the researchers are optimistic that this peptide can eventually be used for treatment Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia patients.

And when the peptide was tested in mice with Alzheimer’s disease and overactive CDK5, the mice had less DNA damage, neuroinflammation, and neuronal loss. The researchers also tested it in mice with Alzheimer’s disease that had a mutant form of Tau that caused tangles of the protein in the brain. These mice had less tau prevalence and less neuronal loss after treatment. In addition, mice that received the test peptide performed better on the water maze task than control mice given the scrambled peptide. The new discovery could lead to the development of drugs capable of reversing the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease in the future.