Prof. Neville Vassallo, left, Michelle Briffa and Dr Ruben Cauchi. Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina

The prickly pear and a common brown seaweed found around the Maltese islands could hold the key to delaying two of the diseases of ageing, a University of Malta-led study has found.

Scientists have discovered that chemicals extracted from these plants ameliorated the symptoms shown by organisms with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The findings are the first of the sort worldwide to be published in a scientific journal, January’s edition of the Neuroscience Letters.

For lead study author Ruben Cauchi, from the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, the findings show that the Mediterranean could be the source of the “fountain of youth”.

Over the course of the last four years, researchers from the University of Malta and France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have confirmed that chemicals extracted from the prickly pear and a seaweed  commonly known as peacock’s tail could be candidates for potential drugs to combat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

So far there is no cure for either and current research is focused on medicine that could delay their progression.

These age-related diseases are characterised by the accumulation of sticky protein clumps that over time damage the nervous system, eroding mobility or memory, Dr Cauchi explained.

Prof. Neville Vassallo, from the same faculty, had for years led research into these proteins, which were recreated in a laboratory setting but not in a living organism.

His team had extracted molecules from several terrestrial and marine plants, including grapes and black tea leaves, and tested their relationship with these proteins.

When the prickly pear and the brown seaweed stood out, it was time to move on to testing them out on a living organism with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

So a call for a researcher was issued four years ago and Michelle Briffa, who had just completed a Master’s degree on flies and neurodegeneration in renowned Prof. Dame Linda Partridge’s laboratory at the University College London, applied for the post.

She spent the first two years trying out different doses of the extracts and concentrations of the molecules. Through trial and error, Ms Briffa found the most adequate doses for varying onsets of Alzheimer’s.

Once the appropriate concentration was confirmed, the team spent the following years testing specific models of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Tests were carried out on yeast and eventually the fruit fly, whose DNA sequence overlaps with that of human beings by 75 per cent.

The health of yeast exposed to the plants’ extracts improved dramatically and this encouraged the team to try it out on fruit flies as miniature humans, genetically modified to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms.

Since a year of human life is equivalent to a day in the life of a fruit fly, and Ms Briffa was looking into their lifespan and mobility, she had to check in on the flies every day – including Christmas Day.

The mobility of sick flies that received the molecules improved by about 18 per cent (equivalent to a decade of improved mobility) – a significant improvement according to the researchers. On average, in human terms, the lifespan increased by four years. The extracts also prolonged the lifespan of flies with brains overloaded with a protein related to Parkinson’s disease.

The next step is to see whether the findings hold in clinical trials, but research cannot continue without funding.

The research that led to the findings being published next month was funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology, the University of Malta’s Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Embassy of France to Malta.