Viagra for the mind set to boost brain power
Steve Farrar Science Correspondent
01/31/99
Sunday Times - London
News International
3gn
Page 7
AFTER the drug for impotence, prepare for Viagra for the mind. Pfizer, creator of the famous blue pills, is developing a new drug that boosts brain power.
The compound, NGD97-1, alters brain chemistry to increase the ability to form memories and may also increase attentiveness. Successful tests on laboratory rats are about to be followed by clinical trials of the drug on patients in locations across Europe.
It will be tested first on sufferers of Alzheimer's disease, who rapidly lose their memory because of the illness. If it has no side effects it might be considered for use in healthy people who want to improve their powers of recall.
"We believe it will have positive effects in Alzheimer's patients with regard to cognition," said Dr Nicholas Saccomano, who heads Pfizer's research into the central nervous system.
NGD97-1 is the product of a long collaboration between Pfizer scientists worldwide and Neurogen, an American biotech firm that is looking at a range of drugs that intervene in the complex chemistry of the brain.
While it is still not known precisely where memories are stored, experts have found some of the ways in which they are made and how illnesses like Alzheimer's and other forms of degenerative dementia can make this process go wrong.
Pfizer has focused on the chemicals that transmit messages between brain cells or neurones.
These transmitters are vital links in the circuitry of the mind and control the way we think. NGD97-1 contains a compound that targets one transmitter that reduces the ability to form a memory in what is known as the GABA system. By blocking this chemical's effect, the drug effectively boosts memory.
Saccomano said the drug was intended only to help reverse memory loss symptoms that afflict sufferers of degenerative brain conditions. He admitted, however, that Pfizer was seriously considering the potential of such drugs for healthy people if it was possible to eliminate all side effects.
"Right now, we're really focused on helping people with clinical disorders but we are starting to look at the scientific, clinical, ethical and commer cial aspects of cognitive improvement from such drugs in normal people," he said.
It is thought many healthy men have tried to enhance their sexual performance using Viagra , which was developed to help sufferers of erectile disfunction, helping make it one of the fastest-selling drugs of all time.
Nigel Greig, a British brain chemistry specialist at the National Institute of Ageing in America who is working on developing a different kind of cognitive enhancing drug with a biotech company called Axonyx, said the first effective compound to be proved completely safe was likely to be able to tap the vast market of people who simply wanted to boost their memory.
"Many companies like Pfizer and ourselves have this as their eventual goal as a large number of people could gain from this - after all, it's the dream of every teenager to be able to take a tablet and ace their Latin exam," he said.
Dr Erik Parens, of the Hastings Center, a bioethical think tank in America, warned that such drugs could have a profound impact on society and might increase the gap between the haves and have nots.
A way of boosting mind power has been an ambition of scientists for decades which has led to a variety of spurious remedies ranging from vitamin supplements to homeopathic medicines that have failed to match makers' claims.
Peter Whitehouse, a scientist at Case Western Reserve University who organised a debate on cognition enhancing drugs at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, predicted compounds developed to treat Alzheimer's would lead to general use of substances that boosted intelligence in a variety of ways.
"Although enhancing memory may be an important initial goal, ultimately our task should be to enhance higher human thought capabilities, such as problem solving and judgement," he said.
There was still a great deal to learn about how memories are formed, which would open up new opportunities for developing pharmaceuticals, according to Dr Tim Bliss, head of neurophysiology at the National Institute for Medical Research in London.
"There will in time be drugs which enhance aspects of our cognitive performance, though I haven't seen much evidence for this yet," he said.
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