Alzheimer’s disease has long been associated with the harmful proteins amyloid beta and tau. They clump up in the brain, disrupting neurons and causing memory loss and other symptoms. Researchers at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine say they’ve found a new way to prevent amyloid beta and tau from building up in the brain.
The Temple team invented a drug that helps brain cells recognize defective proteins so they can stabilize or remove them altogether before they form toxic clumps. In mouse models of Alzheimer’s, animals who received the drug prior to developing symptoms experienced decreases in tau tangles and amyloid plaques, the researchers reported in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration.
