EDMONDS, Washington, March 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientific Reports recently published a landmark research paper which has immediate favorable implications for brain health and memory loss in the aging brain. The paper entitled, "The Amazon rain forest plant Uncaria tomentosa (Cat's claw) and its specific proanthocyanidin constituents are potent inhibitors and reducers of both brain plaques and tangles," identifies Amazonian rain forest plant extract PTI-00703 Cat's claw as a potent natural solution to inhibit and reduce the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques and tau protein tangles in the brain, the main reason we lose memory as we age.
Dr. Snow and his team fully identified the main polyphenols in PTI-00703 Cat's claw (known as proanthocyanidins) responsible for the potent inhibitory and reducing activity on brain plaques and tangles and also deciphered, for the first time, how these specific polyphenols may contribute to improved brain health. This is the first publication to decipher the mechanism of exactly how the beta-sheets of both plaque and tangle proteins fall apart by specific polyphenols in a newly discovered natural plant extract.
The research paper, which can be accessed at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-38645-0 was authored by world renowned brain-aging and Alzheimer's disease researcher Dr. Alan Snow. Notable colleagues from eight different institutions contributed to the research that spanned over a ten-year period and yielded a host of significant and never-before-reported findings on the effects and mechanism of action of PTI-00703 Cat's claw, a natural plant inhibitor of both brain plaques and tangles.
Deciphered Mechanism-of-Action highlights include:
"This paper proves that the complex code governing the role that potent polyphenols, specifically PTI-00703 Cat's claw, play in brain health has finally been deciphered. Man (including myself) has tried for centuries already to unlock this biological puzzle, to develop a drug to reduce brain plaques and tangles, when all along nature has held the key," said Dr. Alan Snow, lead author.
Dr. Snow continued, "This is a huge step forward in the fields of brain health, brain aging and the study of age-related memory loss. A double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial in humans is planned in the upcoming year and I am confident that study will support what we have discovered and documented in this paper. Anyone who cares about protecting memory should be paying attention to this landmark paper. Who would think that a plant deep in the Amazon rain forest would hold the key."
About Dr. Alan Snow - Principle Investigator and Lead Author
Dr. Alan Snow is one of the world's most renowned brain aging and Alzheimer's disease authorities. He is former Research Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was an Alzheimer's Disease Research Center project team leader for over 10 years. Dr. Snow has published extensively about brain plaques and tangles and was the first to discover the presence of heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) in Alzheimer's disease and prion diseases, and has shown HSPGs to have an important role in the initiation of Alzheimer's disease and a host of other amyloid disorders. He is an inventor on 340 issued patents, a recipient of a LEAPS award from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease Research, and a recipient of 18 National Institute of Health grant awards including grants to identify new plaque and tangle inhibitors. Dr. Snow has been studying brain aging, memory loss, and brain plaques and tangles for over 30 years and presently serves as founder and CEO of Edmonds, Washington-based Cognitive Clarity Inc.