Suspect papers on β-amyloid have little bearing on Alzheimer’s therapies

Though papers involving the toxic β-amyloid oligomer Aβ*56 have been called into question, decades of work connecting oligomers to Alzheimer’s disease leaves companies relying on the connection unfazed.

A July 21 Science feature story raised doubts about data integrity in several published articles authored by Sylvain Lesné while working in the lab of professor Karen Ashe at the University of Minnesota, including a 2006 Nature paper linking a specific β-amyloid oligomer species, dubbed Aβ*56, to cognitive decline in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s...