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Some medical mice from Great Falls used in the research of Alzheimer's disease are making headlines around the world.

A front-page article in the New York Times summarizes two independent studies which reached the same conclusion - Alzheimer's disease spreads a distorted protein in an infectious manner.

The McLaughlin Research Institute in Great Falls supplied the genetically engineered mice which helped make the findings possible.

Researchers showed that the protein, which can be found in one very small area of the brain, spreads from cell to cell.

Dr. George Carlson, director of the institute, said, "Since it goes from cell to cell, this is a nice place to be able to block transmission. So, if someone is very early Alzheimer's and it's restricted to small regions of the brain, and you can block transfer from one cell to another, it's a new target...a new way to think about therapy for the disease."

McLaughlin Research Institute was not cited in the Times article, but the entire study will be highlighted in the scientific journal "Neuron."

Here is brief excerpt of the New York Times article:

The studies, done independently by researchers at Columbia and Harvard, involved genetically engineered mice that could make abnormal human tau proteins, predominantly in the entorhinal (pronounced en-toh-RYE-nal) cortex, a sliver of tissue behind the ears, toward the middle of the brain, where cells first start dying in Alzheimer's disease. As expected, tau showed up there. And, as also expected, entorhinal cortex cells in the mice started dying, filled with tangled, spaghettilike strands of tau.

Over the next two years, the cell death and destruction spread outward to other cells along the same network. Since those other cells could not make human tau, the only way they could get the protein was by transmission from nerve cell to nerve cell.