The PBS Nova Next website reports promising findings on a single therapy useful in treating Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, and prion diseases and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. All of these are diseases of protein misfolding and plaque buildup in the brain.
The "magic bullet" is a phage virus called M13, which lives to infect only the escherichia coli bacterium. For reasons as yet not understood, it appears to make brain plaques dissolve or disappear.
First identified in Israel and shown safe and effective in animals, it goes into human testing this year. It is still several years from being an approved drug, if that ever happens. Faster, please....
