🧠 Blood-Brain Barrier Successfully Repaired in Alzheimer's Models
The brain has a strict security system: the blood-brain barrier. It lets in oxygen and nutrients while blocking toxins and germs. In Alzheimer’s disease, this barrier can become leaky.
Scientists may now have caught one protein helping to hold that door open. A new study published in Nature Aging identifies fibronectin – a protein that helps injured tissue heal – as a key driver of blood-brain barrier damage in Alzheimer's models linked to the APOE4 gene variant. Crucially, the researchers reversed this process in experimental models.
This matters because blood-brain barrier breakdown can begin early in Alzheimer's, sometimes before memory problems. Once the barrier weakens, unwanted substances can enter brain tissue and inflammation can increase.
@QSIMedia
The brain has a strict security system: the blood-brain barrier. It lets in oxygen and nutrients while blocking toxins and germs. In Alzheimer’s disease, this barrier can become leaky.
Scientists may now have caught one protein helping to hold that door open. A new study published in Nature Aging identifies fibronectin – a protein that helps injured tissue heal – as a key driver of blood-brain barrier damage in Alzheimer's models linked to the APOE4 gene variant. Crucially, the researchers reversed this process in experimental models.
"The most direct and most translatable finding is that reducing fibronectin itself rescues the barrier defects," — Columbia University neuroscientist Çağhan Kızıl said.
This matters because blood-brain barrier breakdown can begin early in Alzheimer's, sometimes before memory problems. Once the barrier weakens, unwanted substances can enter brain tissue and inflammation can increase.
@QSIMedia