University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center

New Capabilities

Lead institution for OTULIN discovery

For three decades, Alzheimer's drug development has chased the wrong protein. Billions of dollars and hundreds of failed trials later, researchers at the University of New Mexico have identified OTULIN—an enzyme previously known only for regulating inflammation—as a master switch that controls whether tau protein is produced in the first place. When they disabled OTULIN in neurons, tau vanished entirely, and the cells remained healthy.

Updated Jan 18