Scientists hope that a groundbreaking new medicine that helps nerve cells to repair themselves could revolutionize Alzheimer’s treatment.

The medicine, dubbed NVG-291, operates differently than conventional treatments for neurological illness by removing a natural barrier in the body that hinders nerve cells from regenerating.

According to Paul Brennan, CEO of Canadian biotech firm NervGen, the drug not only has the potential to reverse the damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease, but it also has the potential to allow patients who have been paralyzed due to a spinal cord injury to walk again.

“We call it repair and this is what differentiates us from almost everything that’s out there in the central nervous system [research] space,” he said. 

“Everybody, when they are looking at neurodegenerative diseases – whether it’s Alzheimer’s, ALS [known as motor neurone disease in Britain], or multiple sclerosis – is trying to arrest progression of the disease. We are trying to repair the damage.”

Mr Brennan stated that mouse and rat testing yielded remarkable results and that NVG-291 would be regarded as a breakthrough drug even if we just obtain half that degree of benefit in human trials.

An estimated more than 6 million people in the US suffer from dementia.

NVG-291 is now being given to healthy volunteers to demonstrate its safety in humans, and NervGen aims to prescribe it to patients with Alzheimer’s, spinal cord damage, and multiple sclerosis, a nervous system illness, beginning next year.

Mr Brennan believes that if the medicine passes rigorous trials, it might be offered to the public within five years.

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