Can the common spice turmeric help us detect Alzheimer’s disease?

The TEDxAmsterdam Award draws attention, and offers support, to local idea-makers. The 2015 Award winner will be announced soon, but for now, the proposals have been narrowed down to three nominees. Jurre den Haan, one of the finalists, is researching a method of early detection of Alzheimer’s disease by using a common spice, the vibrantly colored turmeric, to make visible the Alzheimer protein in the retina by looking into the subject’s eyes. In this interview, we ask him more about his big idea.

The question you’re asking for the TEDxAmsterdam Award is: can an easily available spice help diagnose Alzheimer’s decades before the first symptoms occur? Tell us more about turmeric, and how it has inspired your research.

Turmeric (or kurkuma, geelwortel in Dutch) is a spice used as the main ingredient in Indian curries. It is also an ingredient of Nasi Goreng for example. It has been known for years that it specifically binds to the Alzheimer protein and is fluorescent by nature. That second property makes it easily detectable. Previous researchers detected the Alzheimer protein in the retina of mice with this spice and inspired our team to use it in human Alzheimer’s research as a method for detecting the disease.

You’ll be using a scanner to look into the eyes of your patients. How can the eye tell us so much about the brain?

The link between the eye and the brain comes from embryogenic life. The eye is derived from the same structure as the brain: the neural tube. They both consist of brain cells. The brain cells in the eye might reflect what’s going on inside the brain. The great advantage of the eye is that it is easily accessible with an eye lamp or eye scanner in a patient-friendly manner.

What do you think are the benefits of this particular way of working? Are there challenges to working this way?

The benefits can be threefold. This method can provide an early, patient-friendly, and cost-effective diagnosis for Alzheimer’s disease. The method can provide an early diagnosis because we know that the Alzheimer protein we aim to visualize starts to develop 20–30 years before symptoms start. It is patient-friendly because the retina is easily accessible for an eye scanner and can image the retina in a few minutes.

However, there are also three main challenges or important questions to answer: Is there Alzheimer protein present in the eyes of live patients with Alzheimer’s disease? Can we make them visible with kurkuma? And can we detect them with our scanner?

Why is early detection in Alzheimer’s so important?

Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t develop overnight; the disease starts decades before symptoms emerge. When there are symptoms, severe brain damage is already present. The earliest sign of the disease is the presence of the Alzheimer protein. If we can detect the disease before brain damage is done, we can start therapy to effectively treat Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore, we believe early detection and therapy research should go hand-in-hand.

Your idea has already been approved by the Ethical Committee, and the plan is to start scanning by the end of this year. When should we expect to hear more about your research?

Our team is unique in the way that is multidisciplinary. It consists of Femke Bouwman (neurologist) and me (medical doctor, PhD candidate) of the VUmc Alzheimer Center, Frank Verbraak (ophthalmologist) of the ophthalmology department of the VUmc/AMC and prof. Johannes de Boer and Oleg Nadyarnykh of the Bio Laserlab of the VU university. The team is currently busy preparing a proof of concept study, which we will start in early 2016. We hope to present the first results of this proof of concept study before the end of 2016.

Originally published at tedx.amsterdam on November 24, 2015.