A new vaccine that could help treat or prevent dementia could be on the market in as little as five to ten years.

Dementia is the second-leading cause of death in Australia, but a new vaccine to treat the memory loss disease has just been approved to begin human trials.

The project, which is backed by the US government, has been developed in collaboration with an Australian scientist.

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University tells Mark Levy he’s been working on the vaccine for 20 years.

“The way the vaccine works is it induces antibodies to abnormal collections of protein in the brain, which accumulate in people who develop dementia and stop the neurons communicating with each other.

“So essentially what we’re doing is harnessing the immune system to actually clear these abnormal blockages in the brain and thereby help it to function more normally.”

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Image: Getty/Stevica Mrdja