Empa team observes the development of dementia for the first time

A team of scientists from Empa and the Irish University of Limerick has been able to show for the first time how misfolded proteins in the brain clump together to form fiber-like structures called fibrils. Such clumped proteins, such as the amyloid β protein, accumulate on nerve cells in the brain during the course of dementia diseases such as Alzheimer's. They are suspected to be linked to the development of the disease and are therefore considered a promising target for new therapeutic approaches.

It is known that they clump together to form fibrils. How they do this has not yet been fully clarified. According to a report by Empa, the team was able to observe this precisely from the first moments of the process for over 250 hours thanks to particularly powerful imaging technology.

The special thing about it: some of the nanometer-thin fibrils "apparently ensure the spread of the disease in the brain tissue". according to the press release. They are therefore referred to as superspreaders. Further protein building blocks accumulate at highly catalytically active sites of these fibrils. As a result, new long-chain fibrils form from these germination sites. The researchers assume that these second-generation fibrils eventually spread and form additional aggregates in the brain.

"This brings us another step closer to understanding how these proteins spread in the brain in dementia," says Empa researcher Peter Nirmalraj from Empa's Transport at Nanoscale Interfaces laboratory in Dübendorf. He hopes that this will ultimately lead to new procedures that can be used to better recognize and monitor dementia. The study was funded by the Swiss Dementia Research - Synapsis Foundation. ce/mm