Understanding how tau protein jumps between nerve cells in the brain

Lead Investigator: Professor Amritpal Mudher

Institution: University of Southampton

Grant type: Alzheimer’s Society Project Grant  

Start date: July 2022

Duration: 4 years  

Amount: £261,477.00

Project summary

Tau is a protein that builds up and moves between nerve cells in the brains of people living with Alzheimer’s disease, causing damage. Professor Mudher is using clever genetic manipulation in fruit flies to turn genes on and off in their nerve cells. This will reveal the genes responsible for helping tau (one of the proteins that builds up in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease) spread between brain cells.  

Project background

Tau is a protein that builds up in the brains of people living with Alzheimer’s disease, forming structures called tangles. These tangles form inside nerve cells and make them sick, which causes the brain to be damaged, leading to symptoms of dementia.  

Scientists know that the tau protein can move from one nerve cell to another through the areas where two cells connect. This is how the disease spreads through the brain in Alzheimer’s disease, making the symptoms worse over time.  

To stop this spread, we need to understand how the tau protein jumps between cells and how it makes these nerve cells sick.

What does this project involve?

Professor Mudher and her team will use fruit flies to try to answer these questions.  

Studying disease in fruit flies is very useful as they have simple nervous systems so allow changes to nerves cells to be studied in a living organism easily. They also mimic the way human tau protein becomes abnormal and spreads through the brain.  

The first part of the project will look at whether different features of brain nerve cells allow tau to spread more easily between them. To do this the team will introduce genes or switch off genes to see if it affects how tau jumps between cells.  

The second part of the project will look at how easily different types of tau protein might jump between nerve cells.  

How will this project help people with dementia?

Knowing more about how tau can spread between nerve cells and through the brain, may allow drugs to be developed so that Alzheimer’s disease can be ‘stopped in its tracks’, slowing down the disease progression.  

This research could therefore offer possible avenues for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.