{"id":228279,"date":"2026-01-03T06:09:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T12:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/modified-tau-thwarts-aggregation-in-neurodegenerative-disease-while-retaining-its-biological-function"},"modified":"2026-01-03T06:09:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T12:09:45","slug":"modified-tau-thwarts-aggregation-in-neurodegenerative-disease-while-retaining-its-biological-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/modified-tau-thwarts-aggregation-in-neurodegenerative-disease-while-retaining-its-biological-function","title":{"rendered":"Modified tau thwarts aggregation in neurodegenerative disease\u2014while retaining its biological function"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/modified-tau-thwarts-aggregation-in-neurodegenerative-disease-while-retaining-its-biological-function.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A designer version of the tau protein, developed by a team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, maintains its biological function while resisting aggregation, a pathological trait linked to neurodegenerative diseases called tauopathies.<\/p>\n<p>These findings, reported in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0969212625004435?dgcid=author\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Structure<\/i><\/a>, could lead to new treatments for conditions including Alzheimer\u2019s disease, frontotemporal dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and progressive supranuclear palsy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first step toward creating a molecule that could, in principle, replace a protein that\u2019s pathogenic (disease-causing) while still retaining its normal function,\u201d said study leader Lukasz Joachimiak, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Center for Alzheimer\u2019s and Neurodegenerative Diseases and of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UT Southwestern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A designer version of the tau protein, developed by a team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, maintains its biological function while resisting aggregation, a pathological trait linked to neurodegenerative diseases called tauopathies. These findings, reported in Structure, could lead to new treatments for conditions including Alzheimer\u2019s disease, frontotemporal dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}