Researchers have found a part of the brain that appears to be "immune" against Alzheimer's disease

As part of the compilation of the largest map of the human brain under the influence of Alzheimer's disease, researchers found new evidence that part of our brain might actually be protecting itself against the devastating effects of the disease.

The team noted that the cerebellum – the part of the brain responsible for movement and balance – was undergoing significant but subtle changes as a result of Alzheimer's disease, which could indicate that the brain was trying to defend itself.

This is important because the cerebellum, alongside areas such as the motor cortex and sensory cortex, is suspected of not being as worn out by the disease as other areas of the brain. But nobody really knows why.

In this study, the team found that the cerebellum underwent further changes after Alzheimer's collisions that were not reflected in the motor and sensory cortex.

In other words, it seems that something unique is happening in the cerebellum, and scientists say that it could help the development of treatments mimicking this behavior.

"The cerebellum, thought before [to] to be affected, displays a significant response at the molecular level, "says lead researcher Richard Unwin, from the University of Manchester in the UK.

"Many changes are not happening in other regions, which could imply that this region is actively protecting itself from disease, and we will not know it before we continue our research."

Clearly, the cerebellum is not altered by Alzheimer's disease, but it changes in a different way from other brain regions – particularly the accumulation of amyloid proteins and of tau protein that characterizes the disease in most other parts of the brain.

For the moment, this is only a hypothesis, but researchers believe that the "small brain" of the cerebellum could have mechanisms of survival that the rest of the brain does not have.

For the study, scientists examined nine brains of people dying from Alzheimer's disease and nine healthy brains of people who died from other causes, including heart disease, lung disease and cancer.

They were able to map 5,825 types of proteins in six different regions of the brain, giving them 24,024 data points – and a mine of information for researchers wishing to track the progress of the disease. Alzheimer. The data is now publicly available online.

(University of Manchester)

"This database provides researchers around the world with a tremendous opportunity to grow, track new areas of biology and develop new treatments," said Unwin.

"It could also help to validate observed observations in models of animal or cellular diseases in humans, so it's very exciting to be able to make that data public so that scientists can access that vital information and the information they need. use."

The research closely examined the entorhinal cortex, the cingulate gyrus and the hippocampus, where it is thought that Alzheimer's disease begins. We already know that these brain regions tend to suffer the effects of Alzheimer's disease.

It is in other regions that the main surprise was discovered: the motor cortex and the sensory cortex remained largely intact, as expected, but the cerebellum showed a different pattern of protective protein changes. .

Unfortunately, Alzheimer's disease remains incurable, despite the many recent advances in our understanding of the disease. Over the past year, researchers have identified a type of immunity to Alzheimer's disease in some people, as well as a potentially crucial link with gum disease.

All of this brings us closer to victory over Alzheimer's, along with the 44 new protein changes identified by this latest study. The team was also able to highlight relatively early and late changes in protein expression in damaged brains – again, useful knowledge for working on future treatments.

"We believe that the changes we are seeing in the affected areas later represent early changes in the disease, present before cell death," Unwin said. "These represent good new targets for drug developers because we know that it is important to try to intervene early."

The search was published in Biology of communication.