Found, brain cells most vulnerable to Alzheimer’s

Hopes rise it could lead to treatments

BRAIN cells most likely to succumb to Alzheimer’s disease have been identified by scientists for the first time – raising hopes for potential new treatments.

The cells, found to be the weakest link in the brain, were found in the entorhinal cortex region of the brain which controls memory, navigation and time perception.

They become useless as tau, a sticky protein, builds up internally.

Senior author Professor Martin Kampmann, of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at California University, said: ‘If we understood why these neurons are so vulnerable, maybe we could identify interventions that could make them, and the brain as a whole, more resilient to the disease.’ Alzheimer’s is caused by tau and another rogue protein that builds into plaques, or clumps, outside brain cells called amyloid. The team at California University say some brain cells succumb years before symptoms develop – opening a ‘window of opportunity’. Senior author Professor Lea Grinberg said: ‘The belief in the field has been once these trash proteins are there, it’s always “game over” for the cell. But our lab has been finding that that is not the case.

‘It has become a pressing question for us to understand the specific factors that make some cells selectively vulnerable to Alzheimer’s pathology, while other cells appear able to resist it for years, if not decades.’

The researchers studied tissue from two brain banks of dozens of people who had died at different stages of Alzheimer’s in the US and Brazil.

First author Kun Leng, a PhD student, said: ‘Our discovery gives us the opportunity to study in detail exactly why these cells succumb to tau pathology – and what could be done to make them more resilient. This would be a totally new and much more targeted approach to developing therapies to slow or prevent the spread of Alzheimer’s disease.’