Suspect proteins
Alzheimer’s is one of several neurological disorders caused by misfolding proteins, and scientists are fairly sure that a brain protein known as amyloid beta plays a critical role. By the time symptoms such as memory loss and confusion show up, a person’s brain is littered with fibre-like plaques made of amyloid beta. A current focus of scientists in the UK is misfolded amyloid beta molecules that bunch into smaller clumps known as oligomers and seem to be highly toxic to surrounding brain cells (tinyurl.com/NZLGizmodo).
Another of the disease’s hallmarks is the build-up of a protein called tau, which forms toxic, tangled clusters inside neurons. Researchers have found a drug that can clear away senescent cells in mice so that the tau doesn’t build up (tinyurl.com/NZLAtlantic). Without these tangles, the ageing mice didn’t lose neurons as they normally would, and their memories remained intact.