Today's funding situation — «the worst I've seen in over 30 years,» Gerbi says — further aggravates the situation,
causing lab chiefs to lay off staff and some labs to close.
At the same time, researchers have found that much smaller protein clusters called oligomers — made of only a few copies of these proteins — can be highly toxic to motor neuron - like cells grown in the
lab and thus are more likely to be the
chief causes of brain - cell death in these diseases.