MGH Discovery Advances Alzheimer’s Research

A breakthrough by MGH researchers has opened the way to a major advance in the understanding of how Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progresses, and may hasten the development of new treatments that can head off the disease in its early stages. The scientists created a novel cell culture system that utilizes a special gel where for the first time stem cells are able to replicate and form networks in a 3-D environment, just as they do in nature—a vast improvement over cell cultures in laboratory dishes. The gel, dubbed “Alzheimer’s in a dish,” allows brain cells to accumulate deposits of toxic beta-amyloid protein plaques and tau tangles in a manner that closely approximates how these AD hallmarks develop within the brain. They can then be studied for clues to the AD process, and used to test potential treatments inexpensively. Among their early discoveries, the researchers found that the effects of amyloid deposition among cells is sufficient to trigger the formation of the tau tangles and subsequent cell death, the first time that this process has been confirmed. In another new finding, published online Oct. 12, 2014 in the journal Nature, researchers observed that by increasing levels of a particular enzyme in the cell culture, they could slow the development of tangles. “With our three-dimensional model…we now can screen hundreds of thousands of drugs in a matter of months without using animals, in a system that is considerably more relevant to the events occurring in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients,” says Rudolph Tanzi, PhD, Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at MGH.

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