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The information presented at the prestigious conference was hailed as a potential breakthrough for Alzheimer's sufferers. CEO John Sielert of the Boca Grande Health Clinic said it is interesting news for islanders.

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The jellyfish prevalent throughout Southwest Florida may soon be put to a great medical use in preventing and treating Alzheimer's.

Presentations at the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago this week revealed the jellyfish protein "aequorin" is capable of protecting neurons after a stroke. The information presented at the prestigious conference was hailed as a potential breakthrough for Alzheimer's sufferers.

CEO John Sielert of the Boca Grande Health Clinic said it is interesting news for islanders.

"I would think because of our population that we're going to see a good bit of that," Sielert said. "Because of our population, statistically we would have a certain percentage of it. The topic of Alzheimer's is going to be a topic, I think, most seniors would be interested in knowing about in the event they might be afflicted by it themselves or they may have a family member who has had it."

The unusual jellyfish compound is the talk of the neuroscience field, said researcher Mark Underwood of Quincy Bioscience of Madison, Wis. He explained the connection between the ability to recover from a stroke and the deeply debilitating forms of Alzheimer's.

"Stroke is used in the laboratory because the model replicates a biochemical process in a few minutes what neurodegeneration takes years to do and gives us a good idea of a compound's neuroprotective ability," said Underwood.

The neuroscience pipeline for drug development has been lacking significant breakthroughs for several years, Underwood said.

"The bar for Alzheimer's drugs is not very high," he said. "The existing approved drugs for Alzheimer's have provided a small amount of improvement for the lives of patients and caregivers."

One of the reasons for neurodegeneration, or Alzheimer's, is the brain cell's inability to regulate calcium ions. Calcium-binding proteins help regulate calcium. Their decline is gradual in normal aging and is believed to contribute to elevated calcium ion levels, which in turn affect brain function.

Aequorin's DNA structure is similar to the calcium-binding proteins produced in the brain, which allows it to help promote memory function.

For people over 40 years of age it is estimated that 30,000 to 50,000 brain cells die each day, which can lead to impaired ability to learn and retain new information as well as memory loss. This is where aequorin can help.

Aequorin was first discovered in glowing jellyfish in the Puget Sound by Princeton researcher Osamu Shimomura in 1962. Shimomura won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008 for the discovery and development of this protein for the advancement in calcium research.

Quincy Bioscience is a biotech company focused on alleviating the consequences of impaired calcium homeostasis - the imbalance of calcium ions thought to be related to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

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