A new large – scale study has mapped the early triggers of protein aggregation in Alzheimer’s disease, which is a significant breakthrough in the field of Alzheimer’s research.
Published on June 11, 2025, in Science Advances. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Centre of Genomic Regulation (CRG), and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) used large – scale genomics and machine learning to study over 140,000 versions of a peptide called Aβ42. This peptide forms harmful plaques in the brain and plays a central role in Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers discovered that only a few key interactions between specific parts of the amyloid protein have a strong influence on the speed of fibril formation. They found that the Aβ42 aggregation reaction begins at the C – terminal region of the protein, one of its hydrophobic cores. As a result, the researchers suggest that preventing the interactions in the C – terminal region could be a potential therapeutic strategy for treating and preventing Alzheimer’s disease.
This research is a major step forward in helping scientists find new ways to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, and the methods used in the study could be widely applied to other protein – related reactions and diseases.
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