USP13 Inhibition Clears Lewy Bodies in a Mouse Model of Parkinson ' s Disease

Many age-related conditions are associated with solid aggregates in tissues that are formed of altered, damaged, or misfolded proteins. Protein aggregates are thought to be an important contributing cause of these diseases. In most cases the proteins involved in aggregate formation can and do appear in lesser amounts in young tissues, but we can point to underlying problems that might explain why aggregates only appear in significant amounts in old tissues. Failure of clearance via fluid flow or the actions of immune cells for intracellular aggregates, or failure of clearance via autophagy within cells, for example. Near all processes in cellular metabolism falter with age, and increasing amounts of molecular waste is one of the many detrimental consequences. Aging is in some ways a garbage catastrophe, and removal of aggregates is an important strategy for the treatment of aging as a medical condition. This has unfortunately proven to be a challenging task, particular for those aggregates that form primarily in the brain. The Alzheimer's research community required decades and a great deal of funding to get to the point of even preliminary success in the removal of amyloid-β via immunotherapies, for example. In the case of Parkinson's disease and α-synuclein aggregates, the situation is much the same: slow progress. Thus all novel possibilities for the removal of aggregates associated with neurodegenerative disease should be warmly welcomed. A defining feat...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs