Tau protein reduction, axonal transport and Alzheimer's disease

I'm not a neuropathologist but I thought this was an interesting article (abstract) and podcast author interview from Science.  There has been much attention paid to amyloid-beta and its role in plaque formation as well as therapeutic strategies to modify amyloid protein in the treatment of AD.  The authors in this study developed a model to study the role of tau protein and its role in axonal transport and interaction with amyloid-beta protein.  They found that amyloid-beta requires participation of tau to impair axonal transport and that reduction of tau protected against amyloid-beta induced axonal transport defects in this in vitro model.  The author discusses possible tau reduction therapies in development and future research directions.