The sceening developed by Haruhisa INOUE at Kyoto University’s Center for (CiRA) is based on cerebral cortical neurons derived from Alzheimer patients and uses compound libraries that are known to reduce amyloid β (Aβ). The cerebral cortical neurons used in the screening are obtained from iPS cells derived from AD patients by introducing the neural differentiation promoting gene NGN2 leading after 8 days to differentiated cortical neurons with purity of almost 100%. The compound libraries consisted of 1258 existing drugs that were tested for long-term safety. Using chemoinformatics technology, combinations of six compounds with synergistic effects were found (bromocriptine, cilostazol, cromolyn, fluvastatin, probucol, topiramate). Further clustering led to 3 best combinations, namely cocktails of Bromocriptine, Cromolyn, and Topiramate.

AMED news release, November 22, 2017