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Comment by mofeien | Hacker News Reader

In "mice that had been genetically altered to express human tau"

I don’t think the “in mice” torpedo is as effective in this case. As long as the human tau protein they are modified to express is the same protein targeted in humans then the action of this antibody should be equivalent. We’re talking about extracellular processes here so it should be very similar to how it would work in any animal. ie we don’t have to worry as much about the other differences normally present inside cells of genetically modified mice. Yes there could be confounding variables present in the space between the cells but if this interaction works both in vitro and in vivo it should be generally the same anywhere. All that’s left is safety which should be determinable in the usual ways eg more animal trials.

>As long as the human tau protein they are modified to express is the same protein targeted in humans

I would be surprised if any of this was true. Protein does not behave this way: https://www.uniprot.org/uniprotkb?query=Tau

You linked a database of Tau proteins naturally expressed by different species of animals. The mice in this study are a breed of mutants that express the human version of the Tau protein.

Unfortunately those mice are really not a great model. They express the human tau yes, but that expression is sensitive to a lot of factors which makes human-inactive treatment work well on them.

https://x.com/justsaysinmice used to "in mice" to sensational health headlines where this is the case. They stopped in 2019, maybe they got overwhelmed.

Although there seems no reason apart from health and safety that you couldn't try it in humans. That they can bypass the blood brain barrier is interesting.

I’m no medical scientist by the slightest means, but couldn’t this open the route to a lot of other treatments for unrelated conditions?

Maybe arterial plaque or even prion disease? Seems very promising.

I think anything that can treat arterial plaque would be great. Take it once every other year as a part of your regular checkup, prevent any issues known to be caused by arterial plaque.

> no reason apart from health and safety

You're not wrong, but this is the reason all of my various partners in adult life have veto me making a Farnsworth fusor or attempting CVD diamond processing at home, and they're not wrong either.

The only difference there being there are no international governing bodies that specialize in subjecting dicey industrial DIY projects to weapons-grade safety testing and documentation requirements.

In general, if you want to bio-hack your own body, you're allowed, nobody will stop you.

e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoczYXJeMY4 (even going past the first treatment he did on himself, to the updated version that's not yet human-rated, it's the creator going "please don't" rather than anything enforced).

The health and safety concerns about stuff like this are mostly about other people getting hurt.

Avoiding fusors won't do you any harm. On the other hand alzheimers is miserable. I'd personally be ok to try a treatment where the odds were 50% cure 50% death.

Quite a lot of people would be very happy with those odds, too.

Trouble is, at least if I understand right, for random new treatments still in the animal trials, the odds much much worse than that (there's also a third option, does nothing, and a fourth option of treating the condition but with side effects).

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