How does TDP-43 bog up the brains of ALS, FTLD pa­tients? AC Im­mune en­lists Penn sci­en­tists to find out

AC Im­mune, the Swiss biotech known for its tau ap­proach to Alzheimer’s, is shin­ing light on an­oth­er mis­fold­ing pro­tein be­lieved to be re­spon­si­ble for oth­er neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases in a new re­search pact with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia.

The trans­ac­tive re­sponse (TAR) DNA bind­ing pro­tein, or TDP-43 in short, is found in most hu­man tis­sues but its mis­fold­ed form was iden­ti­fied in 2006 as a com­mon patho­log­ic sub­stance link­ing fron­totem­po­ral lo­bar de­gen­er­a­tion (FTLD) and amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis (ALS). Re­searchers have since sug­gest­ed that when in the wrong shape, the pro­tein ac­ti­vates the “cell au­tophagy gene” ATG7, which prompts neu­rons to de­com­pose.

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