Reversing synapse loss in Alzheimer's disease: Rho-guanosine triphosphatases and insights from other brain disorders.

ABSTRACT: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a monumental public health crisis with no effective cure or treatment. To date, therapeutic strategies have focused almost exclusively on upstream signaling events in the disease, namely on β-amyloid and amyloid precursor protein processing, and have, unfortunately, yielded few, if any, promising results. An alternative approach may be to target signaling events downstream of β-amyloid and even tau. However, with so many pathways already linked to the disease, understanding which ones are "drivers" versus "passengers" in the pathogenesis of the disease remains a tremendous challenge. Given the critical roles of Rho-guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) in regulating the actin cytoskeleton and spine dynamics, and the strong association between spine abnormalities a

SUBMITTER: Lefort R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4322073 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature