A team of neuroscientists and chemists from the U.S. and China September 24 publish research suggesting that a class of currently used anti-cancer drugs as well as several previously untested synthetic compounds show effectiveness in reversing memory loss in two animal models of Alzheimer’s disease.

CSHL Professor Yi Zhong, Ph.D., who led the research conducted in fruit flies and mice, says he and his colleagues were surprised with their results, which, he stressed, used two independent experimental approaches “the results of which clearly converged.”

Specifically, the research converged on what Zhong’s team suggests is a “preferred target” for treating memory loss associated with the amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques seen in advanced Alzheimer’s patients. That target is the epidermal growth factor receptor, often called by its acronym, EGFR.

Overexpression of the EGFR is a characteristic feature of certain cancers, notably a subset of lung cancers.  Two targeted treatments, erlotinib (Tarceva) and gefitinib (Iressa), can dramatically, albeit transiently, reverse EGFR-positive cancers, by blocking the EGF receptor and thus preventing its activation.

The newly published research by Zhong’s team suggests that the signaling within cells that is induced by EGFR activation also plays a role in the pathology – still poorly understood – involved in Aβ-associated memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s patients.