The Hersenstichting has awarded prof. dr. Wiep Scheper of the Molecular Neurodegeneration lab at FGA with €500.000 to follow up their research on Granulovacuolar degeneration bodies (GVBs). GVBs are found in a subset of neurons with early tau pathology in the brain of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and tau-related frontomporal dementias.
The Scheper lab will follow-up on their previous work that established that GVB+ neurons are resilient to the tau-induced protein synthesis collapse and neurodegeneration, for which they identified key mechanistic components. Importantly, GVB+ neurons also retain the capacity to acutely induce the synthesis of plasticity factors in response to neuronal activity, showing the relevance of GVB-related resilience for neuronal function.
Supported by this Hersenstichting grant they aim to exploit the intrinsic resilience pathways that are activated in GVB+ neurons towards a therapy for tauopathies.