Scientists working on progressive neurodegeneration diseases have found that some of the changes could be halted during an “under-appreciated time window”.
The team, from the University of Southampton, UK, studied the tau protein misfolding that underlies many neurodegenerative diseases.
In Monday’s (28 October) Journal of Neuroscience they write: “Clinically, these diseases progress over the course of years. Here we show that the underlying protein misfolding propagates rapidly between individual neurons.
“Presence of misfolded tau is not directly cytotoxic to the neuron; the cells remain viable with limited deficits. This suggests that neurons with tau pathology could be rescued with a therapeutic disease modifier and highlights an under-appreciated time window for such therapeutic intervention.”
The team believes that currently, public awareness of progressive neurodegenerations, such as dementias associated with ageing or repetitive head trauma, is rising.
Their new finding on how Alzheimer’s disease spreads through the brain shines new light on the timescale of this process, as well as how the misfolded tau proteins spread to other cells.
They used a circuit of mouse neurons grown in a cell culture for the tests, introducing diseased tau proteins to these cells.
Co-author Dr Katrin Deinhardt says: “We saw that misfolding tau was not immediately toxic and that the affected cells could tolerate the build-up better than we anticipated. This is a really positive outcome and highlights that there is a window of time where therapeutic intervention could take place to rescue neurons with tau pathology.”
Hallinan, G. I. et al. Tau misfolding efficiently propagates between individual intact hippocampal neurons. Journal of Neuroscience 28 October 2019 doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1590-19.2019
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2019/10/23/JNEUROSCI.1590-19.2019
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