Drug closing in on Alzheimer’s

From The Australian, 20 September 2008:
BETA-amyloid protein isn’t really much to look at. A tangle of amino acids, for much of our lives it exists harmlessly in our brains.
But occasionally, something goes wrong. As we age, beta-amyloid can start to accumulate, building into deposits or plaques that somehow interfere with normal brain function in a way we are yet to fully understand, but are all too familiar with: Alzheimer’s disease.
Pathologist Ashley Bush, head of the Oxidation Biology Laboratory at Melbourne’s Mental Health Research Institute, has a theory about what goes wrong. If he’s right, it could not only lead to the first disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, but it could also produce Australia’s first home-grown blockbuster drug. Read more.