Exploiting a window into AD

A paper in Naturepresents the first images of how Alzheimer's disease-associated amyloid plaques initially appear in living brains, and points to microglia, the brain's immune cells, as potential therapeutic targets. The question, however, is how to modulate microglia, as the specific role of these roving immune cells in Alzheimer's disease is still unclear.

Although figuring out how microglia are activated near amyloid will require further experiments, companies with amyloid-targeting AD therapeutics in the clinic could use techniques from the paper to tease out the specific mechanisms by which their antibodies and vaccines work...