Dementia: Researchers link the stress response to brain cell death

Evan Walker
Evan Walker TheMediTary.Com |
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New research suggests the body’s inability to turn off the stress response is linked to brain cell death in neurodegenerative diseases. Alpgiray Kelem/Getty Images
  • A new study challenges the concept that protein aggregates in the brain are the direct cause of cell death in neurodegenerative diseases.
  • The researchers noted the culprit is the body’s inability to turn off the stress response in brain cells.
  • The findings highlight the potential for using certain drugs to deactivate the brain’s stress response and maintain the activity of a newly identified protein complex, SIFI.
  • The new insights shift the focus from targeting protein aggregates to managing the stress response mechanism and introduce the potential for new treatment strategies.

Many neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), have been linked to the buildup of protein aggregates in the brain, leading researchers to believe that these protein clumps are responsible for the death of brain cells.

As a result, efforts to find treatments focused on dissolving and eliminating these protein formations have largely been unsuccessful.

But now, new research published in Nature challenges this assumption.

The study authors propose the lethal factor for brain cells is not the protein aggregates themselves but the inability of the body to deactivate the stress response in these cells and maintain the activity of a newly identified protein complex known as SIFI.

Their study demonstrates that administering a drug that can halt this stress response can rescue cells affected by a neurodegenerative condition known as early-onset dementia.

Lead researcher Michael Rapé, PhD, professor and head of the Division of Molecular Therapeutics, Dr. K. Peter Hirth Chair of Cancer Biology at UC Berkeley, said this discovery opens up potential new ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases. He explained that we find clumps of proteins, known as aggregates, inside cells in certain diseases.

Prof. Rapé told Medical News Today the new research highlights how “a set of neurodegenerative diseases are connected through their persistent activation of a stress response pathway (the cellular stress response to mitochondrial import defects).”

“The stress response is normally turned off by a dedicated factor — the first example of ‘stress response silencing’ — and mutations in this factor cause early-onset dementia.”

— Prof. Michael Rapé, lead study author

New treatment strategies could eventually involve “compounds that turn off the stress response kinase (HRI),” Prof. Rapé explained.

However, the “best way to treat neurodegenerative disease would be to limit aggregation and silence stress response signaling at the same time, reminiscent of combination therapy now in use in oncology,” the study author added.

Further research is needed, explained Dr. Merrill. “We need robust funding and rapid development of clinical trials targeting mechanisms like the one discovered in this work,” he noted.

“There is still much work to be done, but stress response silencing may prove to be a valuable way to slow or stop [the] progression of some neurodegenerative diseases,” Dr. Merrill concluded.

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