NPR picked up the "pathogen hypothesis" Brain Bug / how microbial infections may cause Alz Amyloids like Peptides / Host Defense
Great backstory... lightbulb moment, kind of like DeGrado and friends scribbling PMX-30063 on a napkin, then actually -- with a lot of Super Computing heft -- designing it De Novo. Or Zasloff wondering why frogs, when cut, didn't develop infections. Magainin. Frog peptides.
Endlessly fascinates me how BRI arguably has improved on a key aspect -- peptides -- of the body's host defense.
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These peptides are "extremely important," Moir says. "They're not like legacies from an immune system we don't use anymore. If you don't have them, you're going to die in a couple of hours."
As Moir surfed through paper after paper, he realized that one of these ancient molecules, known as LL-37, looked a lot like a molecule closely associated with Alzheimer's. That molecule is called amyloid-beta and it forms the sticky plaques that tend to build up in the brains of people with dementia.
LL-37 and Amyloid-beta "looked just like peas in a pod," Moir says.
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