New target for Alzheimer's disease therapies
When it comes to preventing Alzheimer's disease, tau could be the answer. Brian Kraemer, a research associate professor of medicine in the Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a scientist at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, discusses his team's study published in Science Translational Medicine. They looked at what could protect worms from tau buildup -- suppressing a gene called MSUT2 -- and then applied the theory to mice. It held up in mice and held true in autospy samples of Alzheimer's patients.