KenH
Well-Known Member
‘ “Personally, I think that this is the biggest thing that we have done because it offers fundamental and important insight into tau that has immediate implications for therapy and diagnosis," Diamond told Medscape Medical News.
If it's possible to detect seed-competent tau in healthy people, "we could anticipate disease, and that's been a major goal of our center — to develop diagnostic tests that could be applied to a healthy population, analogous to the way we use hemoglobin A1c to detect early diabetes," said Diamond.
In terms of therapeutics, "it may be possible to develop therapies to target only the bad forms of tau that are building up as opposed to all tau. If the protein has two different defined structures, then you can envision making small molecules that stick to the normal or good form of tau and stabilize it before it converts to the bad form," he added. ‘
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/899370
If it's possible to detect seed-competent tau in healthy people, "we could anticipate disease, and that's been a major goal of our center — to develop diagnostic tests that could be applied to a healthy population, analogous to the way we use hemoglobin A1c to detect early diabetes," said Diamond.
In terms of therapeutics, "it may be possible to develop therapies to target only the bad forms of tau that are building up as opposed to all tau. If the protein has two different defined structures, then you can envision making small molecules that stick to the normal or good form of tau and stabilize it before it converts to the bad form," he added. ‘
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/899370