{"id":242475,"date":"2026-08-10T09:09:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T14:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/atomic-view-of-alzheimers-disease-peptide-could-inform-new-drugs"},"modified":"2026-08-10T09:09:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T14:09:51","slug":"atomic-view-of-alzheimers-disease-peptide-could-inform-new-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/atomic-view-of-alzheimers-disease-peptide-could-inform-new-drugs","title":{"rendered":"Atomic view of Alzheimer\u2019s disease peptide could inform new drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/atomic-view-of-alzheimers-disease-peptide-could-inform-new-drugs2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer\u2019s disease is the accumulation of a peptide in the brain known as amyloid beta. A new study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-75895-9\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i> on July 22 has uncovered the atomic structure of the peptide in its harmful form.<\/p>\n<p>Amyloid beta is a naturally occurring peptide that exists in healthy brains. But in Alzheimer\u2019s disease, these peptides clump together abnormally and form large plaques. Scientists have known about the association between these plaques and Alzheimer\u2019s disease for over a century, but whether this buildup is actually damaging the brain or simply a byproduct of the disease has been hotly debated.<\/p>\n<p>There is also an intermediate state of amyloid beta that exists between the healthy peptides and the large plaques. Emerging evidence suggests that it is these intermediates\u2014so-called \u201coligomeric\u201d amyloid beta\u2014that drive damage to the brain, but their structure has remained unknown. Now, a team of researchers at Yale School of Medicine has characterized this intermediate form for the first time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer\u2019s disease is the accumulation of a peptide in the brain known as amyloid beta. A new study published in Nature Communications on July 22 has uncovered the atomic structure of the peptide in its harmful form. Amyloid beta is a naturally occurring peptide that exists in healthy brains. But [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242475","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=242475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}