An HIV drug may stop a harmful protein from creeping between nerve cells — in flies
A protein inside brain cells can build a shell like a virus and carry a damaging protein into neighbouring cells. In fruit flies, blocking that shell improved movement and helped the flies live longer.
Why it matters
ALS and frontotemporal dementia are diseases in which nerve cells slowly die, and there is no cure. Doctors have long seen the damage creep from one part of the brain to the next, without knowing how. This study offers a possible answer, plus a medicine that already exists and could be tested. But this was done in fruit flies and in human cells grown in a dish, and a whole human body may respond very differently.
Who's behind it: A. Jimenez-Zuniga and colleagues, A Spanish research collaboration.
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