This technology provides pharmaceutical and food compositions for preventing or treating Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and degenerative brain diseases, using methyl stearate isolated from Chinese quince extract or a chloroform fraction of Chinese quince containing it as an active ingredient. It also includes a method for the stepwise fractionation and purification of this component from Chinese quince.
In the brains of Alzheimer's patients, the levels and activity of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), which helps produce acetylcholine, decrease sharply. Macromolecular substances like nerve growth factors intended to compensate for this struggle to cross the blood-brain barrier, creating drug delivery challenges. Most commercially available dementia treatments are cholinesterase inhibitors, which carry burdens such as frequent dosing or liver toxicity, and there is a lack of approved ChAT activators.
This technology identifies a low-molecular-weight component from the long-consumed Chinese quince that activates ChAT; its small molecular weight makes it advantageous for crossing the blood-brain barrier. The purification process involves extracting Chinese quince with a solvent, sequentially fractionating it with hexane, chloroform, and ethyl acetate, and purifying the chloroform fraction via silica gel column chromatography and HPLC to obtain the active ingredient. Applicable as a candidate for new Alzheimer's drugs, health supplements for memory and cognitive improvement, or as an adjunct to existing cholinesterase inhibitors, it offers a novel approach to boosting acetylcholine production in the brain using a low-molecular-weight component derived from an edible fruit.
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