New hope for people affected by dementia

I am sure that the announcement at the end of July of a new potential drug that may halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease will not have escaped your attention, having featured heavily in the BBC evening news on 29 July. The News potentially useful drug, Rember, was discovered by accident over 20 years ago by Professor Claude Wischik (BBC News, 2008). This is not the first breakthrough scientific discovery to be made by accident. Penicillin was identified in a similar way, for example. The events that led to the discovery of Rember occurred in the professor's laboratory, when a drop of methylthioninium chloride (a blue dye), was accidentally dropped into a test tube (BBC News, 2008). The test tube contained tau protein, the basis for the characteristic neurofibrillary tangles seen at postmortem in the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease. When the blue dye came into contact with the tau protein, the protein was destroyed.