- A new study challenges the concept that protein aggregates in the brain are the direct cause of cell death in neurodegenerative diseases.
- The researchers noted the culprit is the body’s inability to turn off the stress response in brain cells.
- The findings highlight the potential for using certain drugs to deactivate the brain’s stress response and maintain the activity of a newly identified protein complex, SIFI.
- The new insights shift the focus from targeting protein aggregates to managing the stress response mechanism and introduce the potential for new treatment strategies.
Many neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), have been linked to the buildup of protein aggregates in the brain, leading researchers to believe that these protein clumps are responsible for the death of brain cells.
As a result, efforts to find treatments focused on dissolving and eliminating these protein formations have largely been unsuccessful.
But now, new research published in
The study authors propose the lethal factor for brain cells is not the protein aggregates themselves but the inability of the body to deactivate the stress response in these cells and maintain the activity of a newly identified protein complex known as SIFI.
Their study demonstrates that administering a drug that can halt this stress response can rescue cells affected by a neurodegenerative condition known as early-onset dementia.
Lead researcher Michael Rapé, PhD, professor and head of the Division of Molecular Therapeutics, Dr. K. Peter Hirth Chair of Cancer Biology at UC Berkeley, said this discovery opens up potential new ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases. He explained that we find clumps of proteins, known as aggregates, inside cells in certain diseases.
Prof. Rapé told Medical News Today the new research highlights how “a set of neurodegenerative diseases are connected through their persistent activation of…
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