A study published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry presents a new family of candidate compounds for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and pain, which have shown promising effects in animal models. Researchers of the University of Barcelona led a multidisciplinary team that designed, synthetized and pharmacologically validated these molecules that modulate a therapeutic target which has been little studied, the imidazoline I2 receptors, which are altered in many diseases without efficient pharmacological treatments. According to the researchers, the new compound has the “necessary characteristics to progress in pre-clinical phases and to be positioned as a potential anti-Alzheimer’s drug or analgesic with a novel mechanism of action”.

The new study is coordinated by Carmen Escolano, professor at the UB’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and member of the UB Institute of Biomedicine (IBUB). It includes the participation of Mercè Pallàs and Christian Griñán-Ferré, researchers at the UB Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) and the Networking Biomedical Research Centre on Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIBERNED), among other experts from the same faculty. Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC),  the University of the Basque Country, the Networking Biomedical Research Centre on Mental Health (CIBERSAM) area, the University of Granada, the Complutense University of Madrid, the University of Santiago de Compostela, the University of the Balearic Islands, the MEDINA Foundation Center of Excellence in Research of Innovative Medicines of Andalusia, the University of Belgrade (Serbia) and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) have also collaborated.

Read more: https://web.ub.edu/en/web/actualitat/w/farmac-tractament-alzheimer-dolor