A newly developed antibody that increases the activation of TREM2—a receptor on microglia—reduces amyloid burden and alleviates cognitive decline in mice exhibiting Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. These findings indicate that the antibody, Ab18 TVD-Ig/aTfR, may have promise as a treatment for the disease.
The work was led by Zhiqiang An, PhD, professor at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and Ningyan Zhang, PhD, professor at the Texas Therapeutics Institute at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine. Their team published their work in Science Translational Medicine in an article entitled, “A tetravalent TREM2 agonistic antibody reduced amyloid pathology in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.”
