Tau Aggregates and Tau Pathology

Issue title: Is Tau Aggregation Toxic or Protective?

Guest editors: Jesus Avila, George Perry and Mark A. Smith

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Hernández, Félix^a | Avila, Jesús^{a; b; *}

Affiliations: [a] Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa”, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain | [b] Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Madrid, Spain

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Prof. Jesus Avila, Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa”, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Nicolás Cabrera, 1, 28049 Madrid, Spain. Tel.: +34 91 196 4564; Fax: +34 91 196 4420; E-mail: javila@cbm.uam.es.

Abstract: There is controversy in some neurodegenerative disorders whether the presence of aberrant aggregates in a neuron could have a toxic or a protective effect. In some disorders like in encephalopathies (prion disease), protein aggregates are toxic for the neuron. In other disorders, like Huntington disease, a protective role has been suggested for the aggregates of huntingtin. In this paper, we review the role of tau aggregation and hypothesize that tau aggregates could have an insufficient protective role in damaged neurons.

Keywords: GSK3, tau aggregation, tau phosphorylation, tauopathology

DOI: 10.3233/JAD-2008-14414

Journal: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 449-452, 2008