Causes for Alzheimer’s disease have ranged from beta -amyloid clumps forming in the gut before migrating to the brain (New Scientist, Alice Klein, 25 July 2020-p14) to neuronal tangles caused by the tau protein/exosomes leaking from the lysosomes of neurons.   In an article, “Toxic Protein Discovery in Alzheimer’s Research”, (The Australian, 2.2.2021) ,  University of Queensland dementia expert, Professor Jurgen Gotz referred to the toxic accumulation of the neuronal tangles inside of neurons leading to memory loss and further impairments.  Queensland Brain Institute research fellow Dr Juan Polanco also referred to the relevance of this research to cancer research: “…there was emerging evidence that exosomes could enable cancerous tumours to metastasize more quickly…Improving our understanding of how Alzheimer’s and other diseases spread through exosomes will allow us to create new ways to treat and intervene in [the cellular processes by which Alzheimer’s and other diseases spread]”.   He also said that the ‘more that is discovered about these mechanisms the greater the chance of ultimately devising ways of interfering with the process”.

GGF potential contribution

The GGF Geneseeker software suite can create GGF motifs for DNA sequences encoding all proteins of interest for comparison, reference and further analysis. The GGF is thought to produce profiles of key protein sub units from the relevant genes and their alleles and so due to the uniqueness of GGF motifs these GGF profiles may disclose abnormalities not apparent from other forms of testing.

In terms of clinical research,   GGF Codeweaver can also take profiles of  toxic proteins and process them to produce GGF peptides as potential ligands to target these proteins with a view to making candidate pharmacophores leading to a drug to treat Alzheimer’s.  These drug candidates could then be tested using virtual screening microarray or other lab techniques.