Tau Protein and Alzheimer's Disease

ALZHEIMER'S Disease (AD) is a slow disease, specific for hu-man brain, of unknown origin and not curable thus far. This re-view defines ome of the boundary conditions of research. Because AD is slow, its early stages are not noticed clinically. This hampers the development of drugs that might slow down or reverse the progression of the disease. Conversely, when the dis-ease is noticed clinically, much of the brain damage is irreversible. Because AD is restricted to human brain, it is not accessible to most methods of experimental nalysis. Because the origin of AD is unknown, it is difficult to search for diagnostic tools or for a medication. The known correlations with genetic or environmental f ctors are, in most cases, not strong enough to determine a unique chain of cause and effect. This illustrates the need for the following: (a) Model systems easily accessible to experimentation a d analysis