Nature paper shows human tau fibrils injected into mice make mouse tau copy their structure, supporting prion-like spread

30 September 2026

A paper in Nature by Lövestam and colleagues, published on 30 September 2026, tested whether tau protein spreads like a prion.
Prions are shape-shifting proteins that act as templates, forcing normal functional proteins into a misfolded, aggregation-prone form.
Injecting human tau fibrils into mice caused mouse tau to take on the form of the injected structures.
The result bolsters the theory that tau, a feature of neurodegenerative disorders, propagates like prions.
Other proteins linked to neurodegenerative disease, such as amyloid-beta and alpha-synuclein, are also thought to spread in a prion-like way.