Alzheimer’s Disease is characterized by amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Understanding their role in pathology is crucial for developing a treatment for this yet incurable disease. Professor Jürgen Götz generated the first transgenic mouse model with a tau pathology. By combining a transgenic with a transplantation approach he proved the amyloid cascade hypothesis, a concept central in the field, and showed that amyloid induces a tau pathology. He also demonstrated that tau is needed for amyloid to exert toxicity, by ‘axonal’ tau assuming a previously unidentified function in dendrites. He developed a novel scanning ultrasound approach to reduce amyloid toxicity.
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