When Conjugated Polymers Meet Amyloid Fibrils

Abstract

In the early 1900s, Alois Alzheimer diagnosed one of his patients with a devastating neurological impairment, and this form of dementia became known as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Much research over the past century has clearly established that numerous human diseases, ranging from AD and Parkinson's disease to dialysis-related amyloidosis, are best characterized by the abnormal aggregation of specific proteins. However, in the case of AD, the true toxic molecular species is still debated. Thus, the recent development of new diagnostic agents capable of distinguishing between different morphologies of aggregated proteins is of much interest.