Neurology Today reports from a unique ALS meeting where speakers were asked to be provocative, to shake things up, and to try to find new angles on the pathogenesis of this difficult disease. John Trojanowski, MD, PhD, co-director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, proposed a possible convergence point in the spread of protein aggregates from cell to cell. “There is a precedent for transmission” in Parkinson disease and Alzheimer disease, which have patterns of spread through the nervous system that are highly suggestive of cell-to-cell transmission of pathology, he said. His collaborator, Virginia Lee, PhD, has recently demonstrated that purified alpha-synuclein can be taken up by neurons and trigger formation of protein aggregates reminiscent of Lewy bodies. "This could be how ALS progresses once it develops. We think this cell-to-cell spread of neurodegeneration is a whole new, radical concept of the mechanism of these diseases.”
Neurology Today