New front in war on Alzheimer's, other protein-linked brain diseases
Thursday, October 16, 2014 - 14:00
in Health & Medicine
Proteins must fold into the right 3-D structure to work, and the body produces many chaperone molecules to refold misfolded proteins. Heat shock boosts the number of these chaperones. Research now shows that, equally important, heat shock also boosts a protein that stabilizes actin, the building block of the cytoskeleton. This opens new avenues for therapies to prevent protein misfolding and its associated diseases -- Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's.