Chicago: Out of the Blue—A Tau-based Treatment for AD?
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Of all clinical trials reported at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease (ICAD) held 26-31 July in Chicago, one targeting the protein tau was the therapy du jour, both in terms of buzz among scientists and media coverage. Never mind that the scientific buzz ranged from puzzled to intensely skeptical, whereas the media coverage was mostly breathless (see Chicago Sun Times headline Breakthrough Drug Fights Alzheimer’s; Alzheimer’s ”wonder drug”). This first tau-based Phase 2 trial reported at an AD conference fell on fertile ground in part because the research community is so urgently awaiting the development of tau-based therapies. None as yet directly address tau pathology, the second hallmark of AD, and consensus is growing that truly effective, disease-modifying therapy will have to attack both amyloid and tau. Some tau-related targets, such as its phosphorylating kinases or the GSK3β enzyme, have been extensively studied in academia and industry, and pharmaceutical anti-tau programs in general are said to be revitalized; however, no drugs based on these programs have yet posted any success in Phase 2. Moreover, the definitive failure of Flurizan in Phase 3 and the complex, mixed results of Bapineuzumab in Phase 2, made it easy for this newcomer to steal the show.
And a newcomer it is. PubMed lists no publications on the new drug, or on preclinical research to prepare its human testing. From the perspective of AD researchers, the sponsors of the new drug burst on the scene out of left field, with eight abstracts at ICAD and a press briefing that garnered multiple television interviews (see, e.g., CNN clip).
The name behind the potential drug is Claude Wischik. Younger readers may not remember that Wischik made his mark in the AD field 20 years ago, when he published two groundbreaking papers on tau with Nobel Laureate Aaron Klug, Sir Martin Roth, and tau experts Michel Goedert and R. Anthony Crowther (Wischik et al., 1988; Goedert et al., 1988). After that, Wischik continued publishing in the tau field, though he has not reported new AD research findings in the public literature since 2001. Besides holding an appointment at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, Wischik now is co-founder and chairman of TauRx Therapeutics, a privately held Scottish-Singaporean biotech company that officially launched its website 30 July this year during the ICAD conference.
Here is a summary of the drug and the data. Its trade name is RemberTM, its active compound is methyl thioninium chloride (MTC), a reducing agent better known as methylene blue. This is a deep blue dye used in analytical chemistry, as a tissue stain in biology, and in various industrial products such as ink, for example. Wischik told reporters and scientists that MTC interferes with tau aggregation by acting on self-aggregating truncated tau fragments.
The company conducted a Phase 2 study randomizing 321 people with mild or moderate AD to treatment with either placebo or one of three oral doses of MTC: 30 mg, 60 mg, or 100 mg three times a day. People taking AD drugs, i.e., acetylcholinesterase inhibitors or memantine, were excluded. The trial’s primary objective was to compare the effect of MTC to placebo on cognitive abilities measured by the ADAS-Cog battery at 24 weeks. In this phase of the study, patients were assessed every six weeks. Wischik did not show results of the entire cohort at 24 weeks; he showed results stratified by mild and moderate AD. For patients with mild AD, there was no difference between the groups at six months. For patients with moderate AD, Wischik reported a roughly 5.5-point decline on ADAS-Cog for the placebo patients versus a 1.5-point decline in the treated groups, resulting in an approximately four-point treatment effect. (If this holds up, it would be larger than currently approved drugs typically achieve.)
Secondary objectives included assessments at 50 and 84 weeks, brain imaging at 25 weeks, and safety and tolerability. For the 50-week time point, Wischik presented pooled results of mild to moderate patients. By 50 weeks, people on placebo had declined seven points on ADAS-Cog and those on 60 mg MTC by one point, yielding a treatment effect size of about six points. This translated to an 81 percent reduction in the rate of decline on the higher dose, Wischik said. (The low dose slope showed a 3.5-point decline.)
At 84 weeks/21 months, 30 mg data were not shown, but people on 60 mg appeared to have stabilized. If this finding stands the test of time, it would be a major advance in AD therapy. However, leading scientists cautioned that this was a large claim to stake on a single Phase 2 study, not to mention the first human study publicly reported on the compound. There were no placebo data by 84 weeks anymore, as the placebo period ended at 50 weeks; presumptive comparisons would have to be made against historical controls.
This clinical trial featured an imaging marker component, whose data looked supportive at first glance. Some patients (138 as per ICAD abstract, 125 as per presented poster) received a SPECT scan at baseline and again between 18 and 28 weeks into the study. Some patients (18 as per online abstract, 19 as per presented poster) received an FDG-PET scan at baseline and at around 26 weeks. The images were taken at participating sites in England and Singapore, and analyzed at the University of Aberdeen. With SPECT, patients on placebo showed reduced regional blood flow in AD-relevant areas, whereas patients on MTC did not. With FDG-PET, patients on MTC showed increased glucose use, whereas patients on placebo did not. (In both imaging modalities, the data on the posters indicated that the placebo groups were two to five years older than the MTC groups.)
On safety and tolerability, Wischik showed no data to the press but said in the subsequent scientific session that the major side effects were diarrhea, urinary urgency, and painful urination; there were also some dizziness and falls. Wischik said the side effect profile overall is similar to the three acetylcholinesterase inhibitors that are in wide use, but that diarrhea was more common.
On that point, it is worth noting that the talks excluded certain data that have become standard for pharmaceutical company presentations. For example, it is unclear how many people completed each arm of the trial, and what were the reasons for discontinuation. Other scientists in the field later wondered about how intent-to-treat analysis was handled, and how dropouts may have affected the power of the final data.
The 100 mg dose was ineffective. Wischik said that was due to interactions between the study drug and gelatine in the capsule wall. According to Wischik, this delayed absorption of the drug from the stomach to the intestine. However, rather than analyzing this group for what it was, warts and all, or leaving this group of patients out of the analysis, the investigators instead decided to combine the 100 mg group with the placebo group and compared this pooled set to the 30 mg and 60 groups. This is unusual. It means that all side effects people sustained from 300 mg MTC per day were tallied on the placebo side, making the 30 and 60 mg doses look better by comparison. (For sake of argument, it’s fair to assume that if Elan/Wyeth had pooled the placebo group with the ApoE4 carrier group, in whom the immunotherapy did not work so well, and then compared safety in this combined group with the ApoE4 non-carriers, that practice would have drawn protest.)
On MTC’s efficacy, as well, it is possible that including the highest dose with placebo affected the progression of the true placebo group, inflating the effect size. “If the investigators could have gotten statistical significance or a statistic with a p value Wischik noted that the study was double-blind for the full 84 weeks. However, methylene blue colors the urine green, raising the question of how a study with this substance can stay blinded at all. MTC also has been reported to sometimes tint eyes blue. (Sorry folks, not the iris. It goes into the white part.)
During the press briefing and again after his talk, Wischik was asked whether the company had included CSF tau/phospho-tau measurements in the trial. (Biomarker data are increasingly built into clinical trials in AD to establish evidence that the drug at hand hits its intended target. Research shows that CSF tau and phospho-tau go up before AD diagnosis and during its course.) Wischik replied that TauRx did not, because prior research made it impossible to predict whether CSF tau should go up or down in response to treatment with MTC, and that he would have had to pre-specify this issue prior to the trial. In fact, biomarker pre-specification is not necessary for all Phase 2 trials. For example, a Phase 2 trial of Prana’s PBT2 compound, conducted in Europe, measured CSF Aβ42 precisely to find out which way it would change in response to the drug, as well as to obtain some measure of how well the drug crosses the blood-brain barrier in humans (see subsequent ICAD story). It’s unclear at this point how well methylene blue enters the human brain.
Scientists from TauRx did, however, present posters on tau-transgenic mouse lines developed by scientists at University of Aberdeen who are also employees at WisTa Laboratories, a company also headed by Wischik. According to the ICAD abstracts, MTC given intravenously to these mice at 5 mg/kg for 17 days ameliorated tau pathology and cognitive deficits in the Morris water maze. Interested AD researchers can attempt to reproduce and expand these findings in a variety of tau-transgenic mouse lines known to the AD research community. For comparative listings, see tau-transgenic mice, double-crosses, others; strains available through The Jackson Laboratory.
In terms of the compound’s potency, Wischik’s presentation stated that MTC dissolves tangle filaments isolated from brain with an effective concentration (EC50) of 0.15 μMolar and stops tau aggregation in cells with an EC50 of 0.56 μMolar in cells. For background, a compound’s half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) is used for in-vitro assays where there is no absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion (ADME) component. That is, the assay simply contains a target and a drug, and the investigator can assume that 100 percent of the drug finds the target. The EC50 is typically used in cell culture and is lower than the IC50 because the compound has to cross the cell membrane and distribute through the cells. The key parameter for humans is the effective dose (ED50). That is because the ADME component is large as the drug spreads in the body, and only a small fraction finds the desired target, especially if it is in the brain and intracellular. Between the EC50 and the ED50, there can be two to three orders of magnitude difference. Because of these issues, companies typically prefer compounds that start out with an IC50 in the low nanomolar range.
Other researchers at ICAD noted that TauRx plans to exploit MTC interactions with α-synuclein, as well, to develop RemberTM for Parkinson disease. The company’s website states this as well. These scientists questioned how specific the underlying molecular mechanism of a single pan-AD/tauopathy/synucleinopathy medication will prove to be.
MTC is available in the U.S. in tablet form. Called Urolene Blue, it is a grandfathered drug that predates the existence of the FDA, Wischik said. Urolene Blue is being used to treat the blood disorder methemoglobinemia. According to Wischik, it is also a mild antibiotic and in its earlier days used to be prescribed to treat urinary tract infections. According to Wikipedia, methylene blue was used against malaria a century ago.
TauRx has a use patent on a particular formulation of methylene blue, which Wischik said is purer, and hence possibly safer, than Urolene Blue. Both RemberTM and TauRx have new Wikipedia pages, though the former was on the site’s watch list for deletion on August 3.
In summary, Wischik said: “These Phase 2 data show for the first time that it is possible to halt the progression of AD with an anti-tangle treatment.” Most commentators felt that if there is a real treatment effect in this data, even just a kernel, this would be exciting as a general signal that targeting tau aggregation can in fact make people better. Researchers tend to express healthy skepticism when data are not available in peer-reviewed publications. Here, too, they reserved judgment of whether, or how much of, this signal is real. Many will attempt to reproduce the reported effects in tau models with available forms of methylene blue. Scientists voiced enthusiasm about the general approach of inhibiting tau aggregation, but tempered it with some doubt about whether this particular dye formulation will prove to be enough like a drug to be approvable for chronic consumption. The ICAD presentation has raised awareness of this approach; both regulators and investors will scrutinize the quality of the data in detail before deciding on next steps.—Gabrielle Strobel.
References
Paper Citations
- Wischik CM, Novak M, Thøgersen HC, Edwards PC, Runswick MJ, Jakes R, Walker JE, Milstein C, Roth M, Klug A. Isolation of a fragment of tau derived from the core of the paired helical filament of Alzheimer disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1988 Jun;85(12):4506-10. PubMed.
- Goedert M, Wischik CM, Crowther RA, Walker JE, Klug A. Cloning and sequencing of the cDNA encoding a core protein of the paired helical filament of Alzheimer disease: identification as the microtubule-associated protein tau. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1988 Jun;85(11):4051-5. PubMed.
Other Citations
External Citations
Further Reading
Papers
- Taniguchi S, Suzuki N, Masuda M, Hisanaga S, Iwatsubo T, Goedert M, Hasegawa M. Inhibition of heparin-induced tau filament formation by phenothiazines, polyphenols, and porphyrins. J Biol Chem. 2005 Mar 4;280(9):7614-23. PubMed.
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Comments
Is anyone thinking of doing studies with this drug on PSP patients who only have tau tangles and do not have amyloid plaques at all?
Western Nevada College
Methylene blue most likely decreases the hyperphosphorylation of tau proteins by inhibiting the formation of peroxynitrites (peroxynitrites form through the combination of superoxides and inducible nitric oxides). Methylene blue accepts electrons from various oxidases, thus limiting the formation of superoxides (and thus peroxynitrites).
Peroxynitrites play a critical role in the progression of Alzheimer disease. Peroxynitrites result in high GSK3 activity, which in turn causes the hyperphosphorylation of tau proteins. By largely inactivating protein kinase B (AKT) through tyrosine nitration and largely inactivating most forms of protein kinase C through cysteine oxidation of G proteins, peroxynitrites inhibit the two pathways by which GSK3 is inactivated. Peroxynitrites also decrease the protein kinase C mediated uptake of choline through muscarinic receptors and choline acetyltransferase activity. Thus, peroxynitrites cause large deficits in the memory storing compound acetylcholine.
Researchers should study the efficacy of other peroxynitrite inhibitors in combination with or separate from methylene blue. Rosemary holds high promise in this regard. Rosemary can be inhaled directly into the brain, it decreases homocysteine levels (high homocysteine levels contribute to the formation of peroxynitrites), it directly scavenges peroxynitrites, and it limits tyrosine nitration. If you stop the formation of peroxynitrites, you stop the progression of Alzheimer disease.
References:
Alkam T, Nitta A, Mizoguchi H, Itoh A, Nabeshima T. A natural scavenger of peroxynitrites, rosmarinic acid, protects against impairment of memory induced by Abeta(25-35). Behav Brain Res. 2007 Jun 18;180(2):139-45. PubMed.
Guermonprez L, Ducrocq C, Gaudry-Talarmain YM. Inhibition of acetylcholine synthesis and tyrosine nitration induced by peroxynitrite are differentially prevented by antioxidants. Mol Pharmacol. 2001 Oct;60(4):838-46. PubMed.
Heydrick SJ, Reed KL, Cohen PA, Aarons CB, Gower AC, Becker JM, Stucchi AF. Intraperitoneal administration of methylene blue attenuates oxidative stress, increases peritoneal fibrinolysis, and inhibits intraabdominal adhesion formation. J Surg Res. 2007 Dec;143(2):311-9. PubMed.
Zhang YJ, Xu YF, Liu YH, Yin J, Li HL, Wang Q, Wang JZ. Peroxynitrite induces Alzheimer-like tau modifications and accumulation in rat brain and its underlying mechanisms. FASEB J. 2006 Jul;20(9):1431-42. PubMed.
There is just a small handful of information about methylene blue and Alzheimer's (see Atamna et al., 2008; Necula et al., 2007; Taniguchi et al., 2005; Wischik et al., 1996).
As an interesting and somewhat related concept, the use of phenothiazines for prion diseases has been investigated at UC San Francisco. Apparently phenothiazines were derived from methylene blue—not everyone knew that, perhaps.
A press release from UCSF said:
"In [Korth's] current study, he set out by identifying classes of drugs that were known to cross the blood-brain barrier to the brain, and then tested their ability to inhibit prion formation in the cultured mouse neuroblastoma cells.
"He identified only one class that met both criteria: phenothiazines, a group of tricyclic drugs used to treat psychosis. He then determined that a phenothiazine containing a particular side chain structure was the most effective. This was chlorpromazine.
"When he discovered that phenothiazines were derived from methylene blue, a dye used in England in the 1850s, he examined other derivatives of the dye and determined that one, quinacrine, had a similar tricyclic scaffold and the same side chain structure as chlorpromazine."
See also:
Press Release
References:
Korth C, May BC, Cohen FE, Prusiner SB. Acridine and phenothiazine derivatives as pharmacotherapeutics for prion disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Aug 14;98(17):9836-41. PubMed.
Atamna H, Nguyen A, Schultz C, Boyle K, Newberry J, Kato H, Ames BN. Methylene blue delays cellular senescence and enhances key mitochondrial biochemical pathways. FASEB J. 2008 Mar;22(3):703-12. PubMed.
Necula M, Breydo L, Milton S, Kayed R, van der Veer WE, Tone P, Glabe CG. Methylene blue inhibits amyloid Abeta oligomerization by promoting fibrillization. Biochemistry. 2007 Jul 31;46(30):8850-60. PubMed.
Taniguchi S, Suzuki N, Masuda M, Hisanaga S, Iwatsubo T, Goedert M, Hasegawa M. Inhibition of heparin-induced tau filament formation by phenothiazines, polyphenols, and porphyrins. J Biol Chem. 2005 Mar 4;280(9):7614-23. PubMed.
Wischik CM, Edwards PC, Lai RY, Roth M, Harrington CR. Selective inhibition of Alzheimer disease-like tau aggregation by phenothiazines. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Oct 1;93(20):11213-8. PubMed.
How Does RemberTM Work?
How exactly does Rember work? We have been puzzling over this in recent days, and are finding it difficult to believe that a drug so remarkably successful (yes, we know the caveats) could act on only one of the many problems in AD brain.
Rember is methylene blue, we are told. Methylene blue is a redox dye, which means it transports electrons. This is what mitochondria do. Methylene blue has been found to restore cognition to animals with dysfunctional cytochrome oxidase (Callaway et al., 2002), which is of great interest because cytochrome oxidase transports electrons in mitochondria and is low in AD brain (Mutisya et al., 1994).
Haem synthesis is another potential target of methylene blue. Very recently Atamna et al. (2008) found that methylene blue delays cellular senescence and improves haem synthesis. Haem is made in mitochondria and involves reduction of iron (III) to iron (II) by the electron transport chain, and specifically by cytochrome oxidase (Williams et al., 1976). In fact, cytochrome oxidase is itself a haem enzyme, which means a defect in haem synthesis could feed back on itself in a vicious circle. Quite possibly the tangles that Rember is targeting would not develop in the first place if mitochondria were working properly to make resources available for breaking down faulty proteins before they become a problem. Rember dissolves tangles in vitro, like some other redox dyes (Wischik et al., 1996). Tau-tau interaction is thought to be the target, but it might not be the only one. According to Yamamoto et al. (2002), tangles isolated from AD brain can be dissolved by reduction of iron (III) to iron (II), which mirrors what methylene blue might be doing in haem synthesis (see above), and in methaemoglobinaemia, where it does indeed reduce iron (III) to iron (II) (Bradberry, 2003). Iron (III) can aggregate hyperphosphorylated tau via the phosphate groups, say Yamamoto et al., but iron (II) cannot. Iron is a problem in AD brain (Smith et al., 1997), and perhaps its ability to aggregate tau is just as important as its promotion of oxidative stress.
The success of Rember might have even wider significance. Very recently Leslie Klevay published a paper in Medical Hypotheses entitled “Alzheimer's disease as copper deficiency” (Klevay, 2008). Klevay is best known for the copper deficiency theory of heart disease (Klevay, 2000). Heart disease shares important characteristics with AD, not least high serum homocysteine (Whincup et al., 1999) and low cytochrome oxidase activity (Burke and Poyton, 1998).
Cytochrome oxidase is a copper enzyme as well as a haem enzyme. Copper is required for other aspects of iron metabolism besides haem synthesis, including iron efflux from the brain (Xu et al., 2004). Homocysteine metabolism, too, is intimately associated with that of copper (Bethin et al., 1995a and 1995b). Methylation reactions are inhibited by S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), which is broken down by SAH hydrolase, a copper protein. Another key enzyme in the pathway, methionine synthase, may require copper in addition to vitamin B12 (Tamura et al., 1999). Most significantly, copper and protein methylation are involved in NGF-dependent neurite outgrowth, and so is SAH hydrolase (Birkaya and Aletta, 2005).
High homocysteine means problems with methylation reactions. And here is the link with tangles in AD brain: methylation is needed for assembly of the phosphatase primarily responsible for dephosphorylating P-tau, PP2A (Vafai and Stock, 2002). Obeid et al. (2007) found correlations in neurological patients between CSF P-tau and homocysteine, SAH and the SAM/SAH ratio, and they suggest the link is through PP2A.
Copper is low in the modern diet, being largely removed during refining of grains, and Table 1 of the 2006 paper by Morris et al. shows an astonishing correlation between copper intake and cognitive function. It was recently found, most intriguingly, that Aβ peptides 1-40 and 1-42 are members of the Ecto-nox family of copper-dependent redox oscillators (Markert et al., 2004), which suggests they are not just toxic cellular junk.
Methylene blue is a kind of redox oscillator, too. All kinds of biological processes involve redox oscillations, almost certainly including neurite extension and axonal transport. Tangles are produced when these processes malfunction. Even if Rember doesn't turn out to work quite as well as it appears, it will still have made a major contribution to AD research.
References:
Atamna H, Nguyen A, Schultz C, Boyle K, Newberry J, Kato H, Ames BN. Methylene blue delays cellular senescence and enhances key mitochondrial biochemical pathways. FASEB J. 2008 Mar;22(3):703-12. PubMed.
Bethin KE, Petrovic N, Ettinger MJ. Identification of a major hepatic copper binding protein as S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase. J Biol Chem. 1995 Sep 1;270(35):20698-702. PubMed.
Bethin KE, Cimato TR, Ettinger MJ. Copper binding to mouse liver S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase and the effects of copper on its levels. J Biol Chem. 1995 Sep 1;270(35):20703-11. PubMed.
Birkaya B, Aletta JM. NGF promotes copper accumulation required for optimum neurite outgrowth and protein methylation. J Neurobiol. 2005 Apr;63(1):49-61. PubMed.
Bradberry SM. Occupational methaemoglobinaemia. Mechanisms of production, features, diagnosis and management including the use of methylene blue. Toxicol Rev. 2003;22(1):13-27. PubMed.
Burke PV, Poyton RO. Structure/function of oxygen-regulated isoforms in cytochrome c oxidase. J Exp Biol. 1998 Apr;201(Pt 8):1163-75. PubMed.
Callaway NL, Riha PD, Wrubel KM, McCollum D, Gonzalez-Lima F. Methylene blue restores spatial memory retention impaired by an inhibitor of cytochrome oxidase in rats. Neurosci Lett. 2002 Oct 31;332(2):83-6. PubMed.
Klevay LM. Dietary copper and risk of coronary heart disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 May;71(5):1213-4. PubMed.
Klevay LM. Alzheimer's disease as copper deficiency. Med Hypotheses. 2008;70(4):802-7. PubMed.
Markert C, Morré DM, Morré DJ. Human amyloid peptides Abeta1-40 and Abeta1-42 exhibit NADH oxidase activity with copper-induced oscillations and a period length of 24 min. Biofactors. 2004;20(4):207-21. PubMed.
Morris MC, Evans DA, Tangney CC, Bienias JL, Schneider JA, Wilson RS, Scherr PA. Dietary copper and high saturated and trans fat intakes associated with cognitive decline. Arch Neurol. 2006 Aug;63(8):1085-8. PubMed.
Mutisya EM, Bowling AC, Beal MF. Cortical cytochrome oxidase activity is reduced in Alzheimer's disease. J Neurochem. 1994 Dec;63(6):2179-84. PubMed.
Obeid R, Kasoha M, Knapp JP, Kostopoulos P, Becker G, Fassbender K, Herrmann W. Folate and methylation status in relation to phosphorylated tau protein(181P) and beta-amyloid(1-42) in cerebrospinal fluid. Clin Chem. 2007 Jun;53(6):1129-36. PubMed.
Smith MA, Harris PL, Sayre LM, Perry G. Iron accumulation in Alzheimer disease is a source of redox-generated free radicals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1997 Sep 2;94(18):9866-8. PubMed.
Tamura T, Hong KH, Mizuno Y, Johnston KE, Keen CL. Folate and homocysteine metabolism in copper-deficient rats. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1999 May 24;1427(3):351-6. PubMed.
Vafai SB, Stock JB. Protein phosphatase 2A methylation: a link between elevated plasma homocysteine and Alzheimer's Disease. FEBS Lett. 2002 May 8;518(1-3):1-4. PubMed.
Williams DM, Loukopoulos D, Lee GR, Cartwright GE. Role of copper in mitochondrial iron metabolism. Blood. 1976 Jul;48(1):77-85. PubMed.
Wischik CM, Edwards PC, Lai RY, Roth M, Harrington CR. Selective inhibition of Alzheimer disease-like tau aggregation by phenothiazines. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Oct 1;93(20):11213-8. PubMed.
Whincup PH, Refsum H, Perry IJ, Morris R, Walker M, Lennon L, Thomson A, Ueland PM, Ebrahim SB. Serum total homocysteine and coronary heart disease: prospective study in middle aged men. Heart. 1999 Oct;82(4):448-54. PubMed.
Xu X, Pin S, Gathinji M, Fuchs R, Harris ZL. Aceruloplasminemia: an inherited neurodegenerative disease with impairment of iron homeostasis. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2004 Mar;1012:299-305. PubMed.
The University of Texas at Austin
PubMed lists six peer-reviewed publications showing preclinical research in which methylene blue facilitates memory and one in which it prevents neurodegeneration by its combined action as a brain metabolic enhancer and antioxidant. Below is a list of these publications.
References:
Wrubel KM, Riha PD, Maldonado MA, McCollum D, Gonzalez-Lima F. The brain metabolic enhancer methylene blue improves discrimination learning in rats. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2007 Apr;86(4):712-7. PubMed.
Wrubel KM, Barrett D, Shumake J, Johnson SE, Gonzalez-Lima F. Methylene blue facilitates the extinction of fear in an animal model of susceptibility to learned helplessness. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2007 Feb;87(2):209-17. PubMed.
Zhang X, Rojas JC, Gonzalez-Lima F. Methylene blue prevents neurodegeneration caused by rotenone in the retina. Neurotox Res. 2006 Jan;9(1):47-57. PubMed.
Riha PD, Bruchey AK, Echevarria DJ, Gonzalez-Lima F. Memory facilitation by methylene blue: dose-dependent effect on behavior and brain oxygen consumption. Eur J Pharmacol. 2005 Mar 28;511(2-3):151-8. PubMed.
Gonzalez-Lima F, Bruchey AK. Extinction memory improvement by the metabolic enhancer methylene blue. Learn Mem. 2004 Sep-Oct;11(5):633-40. PubMed.
Callaway NL, Riha PD, Bruchey AK, Munshi Z, Gonzalez-Lima F. Methylene blue improves brain oxidative metabolism and memory retention in rats. Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 2004 Jan;77(1):175-81. PubMed.
Callaway NL, Riha PD, Wrubel KM, McCollum D, Gonzalez-Lima F. Methylene blue restores spatial memory retention impaired by an inhibitor of cytochrome oxidase in rats. Neurosci Lett. 2002 Oct 31;332(2):83-6. PubMed.
Darmstadt Technical University
Is methylene blue, a rather old drug, finally on the way to becoming a cure? Speculation and criticism come by the dozen.
The blue urine may enhance placebo effects. Therefore it would be worthwhile to investigate human brain penetration before we start to speculate, and well before we inject or swallow it in larger numbers. Iodine-labeled methylene blue did not reach the brain within 14h, but the additional iodine may have interfered with brain penetration (Link et al.,1996). Therefore an 11C-labeled methylene blue would be far more appropriate. Strange enough: 11C-labeled methylene blue has been available at the University of Aberdeen since 2003 (Schweiger et al, 2003)!
So where are the data? Was the brain penetration of methylene blue disclosed at the ICAD?
References:
Link EM, Costa DC, Lui D, Ell PJ, Blower PJ, Spittle MF. Targeting disseminated melanoma with radiolabelled methylene blue: Comparative bio-distribution studies in man and animals. Acta Oncol. 1996;35(3):331-41. PubMed.
Schweiger L, Craib S, Welch A, Sharp P. Radiosynthesis of [N-methyl-11C]methylene blue. J Labelled Comp Radiopharm. 2003 Nov;46(13):1221-28.
Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, Aberdeen University
This report states that we had pooled randomization arms post-hoc in our efficacy analyses, which was not true. All of our analyses respected the original randomization, and the study remained double blind through to the end, i.e., two years. The primary analysis was conducted as pre-specified, and achieved statistical significance at the 24-week and 50-week time points. The effect was about an 84 percent reduction in the observed rate of progression over one year, regardless of how the analysis was conducted and which of several imputation methods was used in the ITT analysis.
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