Thijmen Ligthart received the DPAN presenter award for his presentation about granulovacuolar degeneration bodies that mark neuronal resilience to tau-induced disruption of protein synthesis.
Thijmen Ligthart from the Molecular Neurodegeneration lab has been awarded the presenter prize at the annual meeting of the Dutch Protein Aggregation Network (DPAN), a national platform that brings together researchers studying protein misfolding and aggregation.
In his presentation, Thijmen described recent findings from the lab demonstrating that granulovacuolar degeneration bodies (GVBs) identify a neuronal state that is resilient to tau-induced impairment of protein synthesis. Using cellular models of tau pathology, this work reveals that GVB formation is associated with the preservation of translational capacity, leading to increased survival under proteostatic stress.
These results provide new insight into how neurons adapt to tau-induced neurodegeneration and suggest that GVBs may serve as a marker of cellular coping mechanisms in tauopathies.