Hugo Vicente Miranda and Tiago Outeiro, from the Cell and Molecular Neuroscience Lab, studied the effect of pharmacological and genetic manipulation of glycation on huntingtin, the causative protein in Huntington’s disease.
In this study the researchers found that glycation impairs the clearance of huntingtin protein, thus promoting its intracellular accumulation and aggregation. Moreover, the authors observed that increased glycation enhanced the toxicity of the huntingtin protein in human cells and neurodegeneration in fruit flies, causing a decrease in life span.
Article is entitled "Glycation potentiates neurodegeneration in models of Huntington’s disease" (full article here).
The press release about this study can be found in the News Section here.