14 DAY TRIAL // A group of investigators from the Chalmers University of Technology and the Wroclaw University of Technology, in Poland, argue in a new paper that molecules present in the human brain when Alzheimer's disease occurs could be used to create advanced nanomaterials for numerous applications.
The Swedish-Polish research team published details of its prospective approach in the latest issue of the top scientific journal Nature Photonics, in a paper entitled Multiphoton absorption in amyloid protein fibers. The molecule they are targeting is called beta-amyloid protein.
Scientists have determined years ago that this protein can produce plaques in the human brain, which have since become a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, a form of neurodegenerative dementia. This condition targets the elderly, and currently has no cure or viable treatment.
While medical researchers are investigating ways of breaking up beta-amyloid deposits in the brain, the new study is focused on putting the molecules to good use in a new generation of nanoscale materials.
Experimentation with this dense biomaterial began around 10 years ago, and researchers have been investigating ways of changing its properties by mingling it with other compounds ever since. The new study determined that multi-photon irradiation can change the properties of materials attach to amyloid.
These results could potentially lead to the development of optical techniques that would make it easier for scientists to detect and study beta-amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease patients.
“Nobody has talked about using only light to treat these diseases until now. This is a totally new approach and we believe that this might become a breakthrough in the research of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease,” says Chalmers expert Piotr Hanczyc, quoted by IEEE Spectrum.
“We have found a totally new way of discovering these structures using just laser light,” he adds, saying that the amyloid nanomaterial also has potential applications in the field of photonics and optoelectronics.
For example, it may be possible to change materials attached to amyloid in such a way that the entire mixture becomes invisible to us. Invisibility cloaks are currently pursued at labs across the world, and based on custom-made metamaterials. Multi-photon irradiation could turn amyloid proteins into metamaterials as well, the team concludes.