Apr. 11 – “Alzheimer’s is a disease that erases the memory, the identity, and an entire life. It’s impossible to truly understand it if you’re not by a patient’s side, for days, months, years, until his illness becomes your own.” Alzheimer’s is a slow, painful, and bitter disease. And taking care of patients isn’t easy. But Mara Consoli made it. The author, director and screenwriter of the documentary “Vittorio, Captain Piston… e tutti gli altri” brought us into the world of memory-loss and confusion, a world that affects about 5% of the population over 60 years, and that in Italy counts approximately 500.000 patients. But good news come from the research front, which in recent years has taken major steps in the right direction: the fight against Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases continues with medicine finding a valuable possible ally in physics. The paper “Protein accumulation in the endoplasmic reticulum as a non-equilibrium phase transition,” published today in the journal Nature Communications, presents the results of an interdisciplinary collaboration between the ISI Foundation, the University of Milan and the National Research Council. “Our work starts from the study of protein accumulation in the endoplasmic reticulum – says Stefano Zapperi, ISI researcher, who authored the article with Zoe Burdrikis, Giulio Costantini and Caterina La Porta – that’s where we can find the first traces of the disease.” By studying the kinetics of protein aggregation through the simulation of linear polymers diffusion, the group was able to successfully use the model to describe the experimental data. By removing beta-amyloid from the central nervous system, it is possible to predict the expected behavior and progression of Alzheimer’s. “We focused on Alzheimer’s,” says Zapperi, “but our model can be used in the study of other degenerative diseases that have common processes. The physics in this case is accompanied by an in vitro study, which offers new analytical perspectives on the aggregation and deposition of protein in aberrant situations. This is an important innovation, because in the future similar techniques could provide a decisive contribution to diagnostics: by identifying the moment when the patient is in the transition phase, we can predict in advance how quickly the patient is reaching the disease, and act accordingly.”
