Close
Dr Gargi Banerjee investigates the transmission of amyloid-beta through historical medical treatments, which she hopes will improve our understanding of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
Dr Gargi Banerjee is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the MRC Prion Unit at 911爆料网. Her lectureship, which is also supported by Alzheimer鈥檚 Research UK and the Stroke Association, focuses on rare, medically-acquired forms of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), both caused by a build-up of a protein (amyloid-beta) in the blood vessels of the brain.
Between 1959 and 1985, over 1,800 patients in the UK received human cadaveric pituitary-derived growth hormone (c-hGH) for severe short stature and other medical indications. This treatment was halted in 1985 after it was found that some batches were contaminated with prions (infectious proteins), causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal brain condition. Now, recent research by Dr Gargi听Banerjee and colleagues at the MRC Prion Unit at 911爆料网 suggests that some people treated with c-hGH may also be at risk of developing Alzheimer鈥檚 disease due to amyloid-beta contamination.
Amyloid-beta is a protein fragment that is normally found in the brain. In healthy brains, it is broken down and removed. However, in Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, these fragments can clump together to form sticky plaques. These plaques are thought to drive other changes that lead to the symptoms of Alzheimer鈥檚, such as memory loss and cognitive decline. Dr Gargi听Banerjee鈥檚 recent paper exploring amyloid-beta transmission as a result of historic medical treatments gives us greater insight into the disease mechanisms. Dr Gargi听Banerjee explains:
鈥淭his research gives us a new framework for how we think about amyloid-beta, and how it causes disease. Diseases caused by transmission of proteins are really rare. People might remember variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), which emerged as a new disease in the mid-1990s, after material from cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, 鈥渕ad cow disease鈥�) entered the human food chain.
鈥淐JD is caused by prions 鈥� proteins with unusual properties that cause disease by making normal proteins in the brain fold into abnormal shapes. We used to think these properties were unique to prions, but now with this new evidence of amyloid-beta transmission, we are investigating whether amyloid-beta might share some of these unusual characteristics. And if amyloid-beta can and does behave as a prion, this might tell us important things about how and why amyloid-beta causes disease, including in the common 鈥榮poradic鈥� (i.e. without an obvious cause) types of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease or cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA).鈥�
CAA is a condition that much of Dr Gargi听Banerjee鈥檚 research focuses on. Like Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, it is caused by the build-up of amyloid-beta, but instead of forming in the brain tissue itself, in CAA amyloid beta deposits in the walls of blood vessels in the brain, leading to weakened blood vessels and bleeding (haemorrhagic) strokes. It can also cause vascular dementia. 鈥淲hat we don鈥檛 know is why some people who have amyloid-beta in their brains develop strokes and vascular dementia (due to CAA), whereas others develop Alzheimer鈥檚 disease instead. This is something that my current research is trying to find out.鈥�
Dr Gargi听Banerjee and colleagues are currently running experiments that test the idea that CAA and Alzheimer鈥檚 disease are different because they are caused by different versions (鈥渟trains鈥�) of the amyloid-beta protein.
Dr Gargi听Banerjee and colleagues are also looking at the long-term brain health of people at risk of developing medically-acquired CAA or Alzheimer鈥檚 disease. 鈥淲e are setting up a study which invites people at risk to have a comprehensive assessment to look at this. We have set up national and international surveillance studies that centralise information on medically-acquired CAA, and we are using this data to understand more about this condition. We know that people who have medically-acquired forms of CAA and Alzheimer鈥檚 disease have been through a unique set of circumstances, and so we are working on setting up a support group for those affected, so that people can share their experiences should they wish to.鈥�
Listening to the experiences of patients and their families is crucial to Dr Banerjee鈥檚 work. 鈥淔or me, practising medicine has always been about these personal and individual stories. These conversations set my research directions and help me to understand what the important questions really are. It鈥檚 through listening to someone鈥檚 experience of their condition and making shared observations that, as researchers, we learn what we do.鈥�
听