Backgrounder on Nanoparticles and Amyloid Diseases

Amyloid diseases are a broad class that includes familiar ailments such as type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease as well as more exotic conditions such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and its animal variant, bovine spongiform encephalopathy or “mad cow” disease. Amyloid diseases are thought to be caused by the formation and deposition in the body’s tissues of highly-ordered, thread-like protein aggregates called amyloid fibrils or plaques. Common to all amyloid diseases is the improper folding of a specific protein or peptide, called an amyloid protein, resulting in its transformation from a soluble form into an insoluble fibrous form through a process known as protein fibrillation. Only around 30 of the estimated 100,000 proteins in the human body are linked to formation of protein fibrils that cause disease. Moreover, the body has evolved a whole host of mechanisms to inhibit unwanted protein fibrillation. It is only when these mechanisms fail that protein fibrillation results in disease. This backgrounder covers the causes and effects of amyloid diseases and the role nanoparticles might have in causing, diagnosing or treating them. Nanoparticles and amyloid diseases | When proteins go bad | How proteins go bad