New York, Sep 8 (IANS): A team of researchers have likely found a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease with a newly developed agonistic antibody.

The study, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, indicated that the newly developed agonistic antibody reduced the amyloid pathology with Alzheimer's disease and that makes it promising to be a potential treatment for the disease.

"Antibody-based therapy is a viable drug modality for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease," said researcher Zhiqiang An, from University of Texas in the US.

The researchers found that a tetra-variable domain antibody, targeting the triggering receptor expressed on myeloid 2 (TREM2) reduced amyloid burden, eased neuron damage, and alleviated cognitive decline in mice with Alzheimer's disease.

TREM2 is a single-pass receptor expressed by microglia, the supportive cells that function as scavengers in the central nervous system.

Microglia plays an important role in the removal of amyloids that cluster around amyloid-beta plaques, a strong indication of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study.

"While previous research has shown that TREM2 plays an important role in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease, the recent findings suggest that increasing TREM2 activation could have therapeutic effects such as improved cognition," said the researchers.

"We demonstrated the feasibility of engineering multivalent TREM2 agonistic antibodies coupled with TfR-mediated brain delivery to enhance microglia functions and reduce amyloid pathology in vitro and in vivo," said researcher Ningyan Zhang from the varsity.