Scientists Describe the Structure of Tangle-Prone Tau

WHAT: Compounds designed specifically to interact with the newly identified structure of the part of tau that is prone to tangling in Alzheimer’s disease are shown to stop the spread of tau in a laboratory setting. 

Paul Seidler, PhD

WHERE: “Structure-based inhibitors halt prion-like seeding by Alzheimer’s disease- and tauopathy-derived brain tissue samples” accepted for publication in Journal of Biological Chemistry and available: https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(20)30493-2/fulltext

IMPORTANCE: This research suggests that a subset of the compounds tested could be disease-specific in their activity while others were effective for all tauopathies. 

These compounds ‘cap’ problematic regions of tau to prevent tangles from spreading. 

Moreover, the ‘capping’ compounds are compatible with cells growing in petri dishes, which allows for faster testing and evaluation that led to the discovery that they can be transiently expressed with common biotech tools.

BrightFocus donors are acknowledged for their support of lead author, Dr. Paul Seidler. This project was funded in collaboration with AlzLA.