New front in war on Alzheimer's, other protein-linked brain diseases

A surprise discovery that overturns decades of thinking about how the body fixes proteins that come unraveled greatly expands opportunities for therapies to prevent diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which have been linked to the accumulation of improperly folded proteins in the brain.

"This finding provides a whole other outlook on protein-folding diseases; a new way to go after them," said Andrew Dillin, the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Distinguished Chair of Stem Cell Research in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dillin, UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellows Nathan A. Baird and Peter M. Douglas and their colleagues at the University of Michigan, The Scripps Research Institute and Genentech Inc., will publish their results in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Science.

Cells put a lot of effort into preventing proteins -- which are like a string of beads arranged in a precise three-dimensional shape -- from unraveling, since a protein's activity as an enzyme or structural component depends on being properly shaped and folded. There are at least 350 separate molecular chaperones constantly patrolling the cell to refold misfolded proteins. Heat is one of the major threats to proteins, as can be demonstrated when frying an egg -- the clear white albumen turns opaque as the proteins unfold and then tangle like spaghetti.

For 35 years, researchers have worked under the assumption that when cells undergo heat shock, as with a fever, they produce a protein that triggers a cascade of events that field even more chaperones to refold unraveling proteins that could kill the cell. The protein, HSF-1 (heat shock factor-1), does this by binding to promoters upstream of the 350-plus chaperone genes, upping the genes' activity and launching the army of chaperones, which originally were called "heat shock proteins."

Injecting animals with HSF-1 has been shown not only to increase their tolerance of heat stress, but to increase lifespan.

Because an accumulation of misfolded proteins has been implicated in aging and in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, scientists have sought ways to artificially boost HSF-1 in order to reduce the protein plaques and tangles that eventually kill brain cells. To date, such boosters have extended lifespan in lab animals, including mice, but greatly increased the incidence of cancer.

Dillin's team found in experiments on the nematode worm C. elegans that HSF-1 does a whole lot more than trigger release of chaperones. An equal if not more important function is to stabilize the cell's cytoskeleton, which is the highway that transports essential supplies -- healing chaperones included -- around the cell.

"We are suggesting that, rather than making more of HSF-1 to prevent diseases like Huntington's, we should be looking for ways to make the actin cytoskeleton better," Dillin said. Such tactics might avoid the carcinogenic side effects of upping HSF-1.

Dillin is codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Aging Research, a new collaboration between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco supported by the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research. Center investigators will study the many ways that proteins malfunction within cells, ideally paving the way for novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.

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New front in war on Alzheimer's, other protein-linked brain diseases