The normal functions of peptides that aggregate in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s have been largely overlooked by scientists, but some argue that they are critical for understanding the development of disease.
New evidence points to a waste-clearing problem in patients’ cells, rather than the accumulation of protein tangles, as the root cause of the neurodegenerative disease.
Johns Hopkins’s Ted Dawson discusses his lab’s demonstration that misfolded α-synuclein can move from the stomach to the brain and cause physical and cognitive symptoms.