An opening against Alzheimer’s
Under normal circumstances, the tau protein is a hard-working participant in memory and brain functioning. But in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, tau not only ceases to play a productive role in brain health, but actually undergoes a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation to become a misshapen villain that destroys brain cells. “Since Alzheimer’s disease takes at least a decade to develop, the major challenge to halt memory loss is to identify the initial period when the tau protein is transformed from ‘good guy’ to ‘bad guy,’” said co-senior author Kun Ping Lu (left), BIDMC investigator, who along with co-senior author Xiao Zhen Zhou, did the research. Photo by Bruce Wahl/BIDMC Media Services Now a novel antibody technology developed by a team at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides the first clear distinction between two tau isoforms — one healthy and one disease-causing — and demonstrates that only the disease-causing isoform is...