By Laura Raines

Pulse editor

Scott Webster set his sights early on helping Alzheimer’s patients.

“My best friend’s grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when I was about 12,” Webster said. “In four to five years I watched him decline from a lovable man who used to shoot hoops with us to someone who didn’t even know his family.

“Watching the painful progress of that disease in someone I cared about really touched me.”

Webster, a fifth-year pharmacy doctoral student at Georgia Health Sciences University in Augusta, has focused on research, and a vaccine he is working on is showing promise.

Webster majored in biology at Augusta State University, with a goal of becoming a doctor who treated Alzheimer’s patients.

“Along the way, I realized that a doctor doesn’t have any way of fixing the disease,” he said. “I thought that if I went into research, I would have the potential of helping more people and maybe actually fixing the problem.”

Choosing to become a research pharmacist, Webster applied to the doctoral program at the Georgia Health Sciences University. “I knew I wanted to work with Dr. Jerry Buccafusco, who was head of the Alzheimer’s Research Center at GHSU. Dr. B was my original mentor,” he said.

When Buccafusco died of cancer in 2010, Dr. Alvin Terry, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, took on his students and helped Webster continue his work on an Alzheimer’s vaccine.

“Alzheimer’s is a very complex disease. Other treatments have tended to focus on just one part of the disease. We felt a more complex treatment was needed, and we’re trying to do that,” Webster said.

With Alzheimer’s, amyloid protein can accumulate in the brain, forming impassable plaque instead of being eliminated by the body’s natural defenses. Amyloid gets to the brain via another protein called RAGE (receptor for advanced glycation endproducts). Research has also shown that RAGE may contribute to the inflammation and damage that amyloid causes to the brain’s nerve cells.

The vaccine that Webster is researching targets both RAGE and amyloid. It uses the body’s own immune system to protect against their over-production and eventual buildup.

“Unfortunately, all the vaccines for Alzheimer’s that have been through clinical trials have failed,” he said. “Part of the reason could be that they’re just not comprehensive enough. They only target amyloid. By going after both proteins, we hope to be more successful.”

His vaccine doesn’t require an adjuvant, which is often added to vaccines to enhance the immune response, and it can be administered orally, which Webster hopes will eliminate the side effects of brain inflammation.

“Our goal isn’t just to change the disease pathology, but to have a good functional outcome,” Webster said. “We have seen improved cognitive abilities in mice in several tests. We need to do a lot more testing, but our goal is to help patients remember longer and better.”

For his work, Webster won the 2011 Darrell W. Brann Scholarship in Neuroscience, a $1,000 award honoring an outstanding graduate student in neuroscience. He also won an Alumni Association scholarship this year, and is twice recipient of the Lowell Greenbaum Award for Research Excellence in Pharmacology.

Webster was invited to present his work at the St. Jude National Graduate Student Symposium, as well as at the National Institutes of Health National Graduate Student Research Conference this year.

He will graduate this month and is weighing his choices for postdoctoral study.

“I would like to continue with the vaccine work. It’s exciting that the research is getting out there and that it could help people,” he said.