Overlooked for 30 years: a new kid on the block
A team led by GSN Faculty member Prof. Christian Haass has identified a novel peptide with a role in Alzheimer’s disease
04.09.2015
An international team of researchers led by Prof. Christian Haass (GSN Core Faculty member, Professor of Metabolic Biochemistry at LMU and Speaker for the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Munich) and Dr. Michael Willem (LMU) has now made a discovery which extends this picture of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, and has potentially far-reaching implications for our understanding of the condition: “A second mode of APP cleavage exists, which involves a previously unknown cleavage and generates an alternative peptide,” says Christian Haass.
The previously overlooked eta-amyloid interferes with neuronal function and may antogonize beta-amyloid – a finding that has implications for ongoing clinical trials.
