ArticleActa neuropathologica communications2023
Astrocytic uptake of neuronal corpses promotes cell-to-cell spreading of tau pathology.
Article in Acta neuropathologica communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Human Stem Cell-Derived Models of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimmune System.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- ThebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Atypical involvement of Alzheimer's tau proteins in diseases beyond tauopathies.Life medicine · 2026Review
- Using iPSC models to examine neuron-glia interactions in neurodegenerative diseases.Bioscience reports · 2026Review
- Exposure to fibrillar proteins leads to widespread infiltration but only mild tau pathology in cortical organoids.iScience · 2026Article
- BAG3 modulates clathrin-mediated endocytosis and tau uptake in astrocytes.American journal of physiology. Cell physiology · 2026Article
- BAG3 modulates clathrin-mediated endocytosis and tau uptake in astrocytes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cell autonomous microglia defects in a stem cell model of frontotemporal dementia tau.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Protective mechanisms against Alzheimer's disease in APOE3-Christchurch homozygous astrocytes.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Alzheimer's disease brain-derived tau extracts show differential processing and transcriptional effects in human astrocytes.iScience · 2025Article
- Interactions of Therapeutic Antibodies With Presynaptically-Released Misfolded Proteins in Neurodegenerative Diseases. A Spatial Monte-Carlo Simulation Study.CPT: pharmacometrics & systems pharmacology · 2025Article
- Article
- Cellular and molecular mechanisms of pathological tau phosphorylation in traumatic brain injury: implications for chronic traumatic encephalopathy.Molecular neurodegeneration · 2025Review
- Astrocytic lipid droplets contain MHCII and may act as cogs in the antigen presentation machinery.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2025Article
- Extracellular PHF-tau modulates astrocyte mitochondrial dynamics and mediates neuronal connectivity.Translational neurodegeneration · 2025Article
- Alzheimer's disease: insights into pathology, molecular mechanisms, and therapy.Protein & cell · 2025Review
- Protein Misfolding in the Pathogenesis and Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative Diseases (Review).Sovremennye tekhnologii v meditsine · 2025Review
- Amyloid-β oligomers increase the binding and internalization of tau oligomers in human synapses.Acta neuropathologica · 2024Article
- Tau processing and tau-mediated inflammation differ in humaniScience · 2024Article
- Neuroinflammatory Biomarkers in Alzheimer's Disease: From Pathophysiology to Clinical Implications.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Tau deposits in astrocytes are frequently found in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other tauopathies. Since astrocytes do not express tau, the inclusions have been suggested to be of neuronal origin. However, the mechanisms behind their appearance and their relevance for disease progression remain unknown. Here we demonstrate, using a battery of experimental techniques that human astrocytes serve as an intermediator, promoting cell-to-cell spreading of pathological tau. Human astrocytes engulf and process, but fail to fully degrade dead neurons with tau pathology, as well as synthetic tau fibrils and tau aggregates isolated from AD brain tissue. Instead, the pathogenic tau is spread to nearby cells via secretion and tunneling nanotube mediated transfer. By performing co-culture experiments we could show that tau-containing astrocytes induce tau pathology in healthy human neurons directly. Furthermore, our results from a FRET based seeding assay, demonstrated that the tau proteoforms secreted by astrocytes have an exceptional seeding capacity, compared to the original tau species engulfed by the cells. Taken together, our study establishes a central role for astrocytes in mediating tau pathology, which could be of relevance for identifying novel treatment targets for AD and other tauopathies.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.