Scientists have found that a compound originally developed as a cancer therapy potentially could be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease. The team demonstrated that the drug, saracatinib, restores memory loss and reverses brain problems in mouse models of Alzheimer’s, and now the researchers are testing saracatinib’s effectiveness in humans. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health as part of an innovative crowdsourcing initiative to repurpose experimental drugs.

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