Autophagy in Tauopathies Such as Alzheimer ' s Disease

Autophagy is the name given to a collection of maintenance processes responsible for tagging and recycling damaged, excess, or harmful proteins and structures in the cell. Better maintenance of molecular machinery means a better operation of cells and tissues. Upregulation of autophagy is a feature of many of the approaches shown to modestly slow aging in animal studies, those that mimic some of the biochemistry of calorie restriction. Calorie restriction itself is thought to improve health and longevity primarily through autophagy. Here, researchers look at autophagy in the context of neurodegenerative conditions. Autophagy targeted at mitochondria, mitophagy, is particularly important to cell function given the importance of mitochondrial production of chemical energy store molecules, ATP, in energy-hungry tissues such as the brain. Further, given that toxic protein aggregates feature prominently in neurodegenerative conditions, and autophagy assists in clearing aggregates, this is another reason to study autophagy in this context. That said, near all of the presently available approaches to upregulate autophagy, such as pharmacological means of increasing NAD levels via derivatives of vitamin B3, are not as good as either exercise or calorie restriction. Animal studies show that mTOR inhibition via rapamycin is in fact better than exercise (but not calorie restriction) when it comes to beneficial outcomes on health and life span, but rapamycin has downsides -...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs