Under ordinary circumstances, the protein tau contributes to the normal, healthy functioning of brain neurons. In some people, though, it collects into toxic tangles that damage brain cells. Such tangles are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
But researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that levels of the tau protein can be reduced — and some of the neurological damage caused by tau even reversed – by a synthetic molecule that targets the genetic instructions for building tau before the protein is made.
