Molecular mechanism of apomorphine therapy for Alzheimer disease

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Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the major cause of senile dementia, and development of curative drugs is an important issue. We have found apomorphine (APO) to be a novel drug that targets amyloid-β42 (Aβ42) accumulating early in the neurons. In the present research, we revealed 1) that the anti-AD effects of APO is not simply due to stimulation of dopamine receptors; 2) that APO elevates the activity of Insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) in the cultured cells; 3) that one of the molecular mechanisms of APO effects may be inhibition of the insulin resistance and elevation of the IDE activity; 4) that APO treatment is more effective for the AD mouse model (3xTg-AD) than lithium treatment which inhibits hyper-phosphrylation of tau protein; and 5) that Apokyn(R), a drug of APO for Parkinson’s disease patients, is effective enough at low dose for memory function of the AD mouse model. While, we studied the nature of intracellular Aβ, and have demonstrated that toxic turn Aβ42 accumulates in neurons before onset of memory dysfunction inducing endoplasmic reticulum stress in 3xTg-AD mice.