Modulating disease-relevant tau oligomeric strains by small molecules

The pathological aggregation of tau plays an important role in Alzheimer's disease and many other related neurodegenerative diseases, collectively referred to as tauopathies. Recent evidence has demonstrated that tau oligomers, small and soluble prefibrillar aggregates, are highly toxic due to their strong ability to seed tau misfolding and propagate the pathology seen across different neurodegenerative diseases. We previously showed that novel curcumin derivatives affect preformed tau oligomer aggregation pathways by promoting the formation of more aggregated and nontoxic tau aggregates. To further investigate their therapeutic potential, we have extended our studies o disease-relevant bra…