Growing evidence shows that the protein TDP-43 plays a role in the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, frontotemporal degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease and Age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy. This makes TDP-43 a key target for developing new therapies and diagnostic/prognostic tools. A team of KCU researchers, including Professor of Biosciences Abdulbaki Agbas, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher Purva Sethi, PhD, and Research Scientist Edina Kosa, MSc, explored its potential as a blood-based biomarker for detecting disease and examined its presence and possible functions inside platelets. Their findings provide important insights into using TDP-43 as a biomarker and reveal a potential complication in plasma biobanking protocols that could affect the accuracy of TDP-43 profile assessment.
Their study published in Scientific Reports.