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Scientists from the Champalimaud Foundation have discovered that the anti-aging neuronal mechanism responsible for the death of dysfunctional cells remains active in this neurodegenerative disease. At least in fruit flies. The article is published in the "Diário de Notícias" in Lisbon.
Hope is open for patients with Alzheimer's
Photography: DR
After all, the death of neurons in Alzheimer's disease might not be as serious as we thought, at least when it comes to fruit flies.
The discovery was made by a group of researchers at the Champalimaud Foundation, which was studying what is happening in the brain of fruit flies with this disease and found something amazing: the death of dysfunctional neurons due to The accumulation of human beta-amyloid protein was not only triggered by the action of neighboring cells in good health, but the acceleration of this process induced by the laboratories resulted in a substantial improvement of the symptoms of the disease.
It's "the first time" that neuronal death in this neurodegenerative disease may not be as negative, the Champalimaud Foundation says in a statement on this discovery.
"When we started, the general consensus was that neuronal death is still harmful, so we were surprised to find that neuronal death can actually be beneficial in the early stages of the disease," said Dina Coelho, the first author of the study, published in the journal Cell Reports.
Quality control
It is already known that there is a mechanism of quality control in the cell tissues, which goes through a competition between the cells themselves. But it's a game of life and death: in the end, the most fit and vigorous cells incite others to commit suicide and always win.
In 2015, the group led by researcher Eduardo Moreno, who signed the discovery, had already made a significant contribution to understanding this mechanism and its importance in biological processes.
"We found that removing unsuitable cells from a tissue was a very important anti-aging mechanism for preserving organ function," says the researcher.
Could this mechanism itself be involved in any way in neurodegenerative diseases that are, after all, a form of accelerated aging? The question was logical and the group of Eduardo Moreno decided to go for the answer: "This had never been tested (before)," guarantees the researcher.
To do this, Eduardo's team
Moreno joins the other Cham-
Palimaud, coordinated by Christa Rhiner, has collaboratively studied the features and processes of Alzheimer's disease in modified fruit flies to express human pathology.
In the brain of these genetically modified flies, there is an accumulation of human beta-amyloid protein, as in patients with Alzheimer's disease. And the symptoms presented by modified insects are in all respects identical to those of human patients: "long-term memory loss, accelerated aging of the brain, and motor coordination problems that worsen with age" says Christa. Rhiner.
As for the question of whether "the most appropriate cell mechanism" would also play an important role here, the observations concluded that "the neurons would not die on their own but would be eliminated by the cells. neighbors more apt, "says Eduardo Moreno.
Possible therapeutic target
Once the hypothesis was confirmed, it was then to interfere with the mechanism of elimination, acceleration or blockage of dysfunctional cells, to see what was happening, and, it's here that the scientists were really surprised.
When they blocked the possibility of suicide induced by dysfunctional neurons, the symptoms got much worse: the fruit fly brain deteriorated faster and they died even earlier.
The acceleration of this process of cellular competition, triggering the faster death of diseased neurons, has been shown to have a beneficial effect on sick flies: they eventually recovered and became "almost like normal flies" with respect to memory formation, locomotor behavior and learning, "explains Christa Rhiner.
"Our work suggests that neuronal death is beneficial because it eliminates neurons affected by toxic aggregates of beta-amyloid brain circuits and that it is worse than losing them to retain them," he says.
But, he warns, "this work was done on fruit flies". It will now be necessary to verify whether these results are also confirmed in human patients.
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