Root Bacterium to Fight Alzheimer's

A study in Angewandte Chemie suggests a bacterium found among the soil in close proximity to roots of ginseng plants could help treat Alzheimer's disease, reports ScienceDaily . Researchers identified a natural substance, rhizolutin, that may provide a foundation for novel therapies. Rhizolutin is produced by a strain of Streptomyces, and the team boosted rhizolutin production of the bacterium 10-fold. This enabled them to determine the structure of the novel compound, while a screening of natural product libraries indicated that rhizolutin is a drug lead that can dissociate amyloid-ß (Aß) plaques and tau tangles. A series of in vitro and in vivo experiments indicated clear dissociation of insoluble Aß and tau aggregates by the compound. Rhizolutin significantly reduced the inflammatory processes and cell death caused by Aß in cultures of neuronal and glial cells, and also dissociated the Aß plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's.