Tokyo Metropolitan University Nov 17 2025 Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have applied ideas from polymer physics to illuminate the mechanism behind a key pathology in Alzheimer's disease, the formation of fibrils of tau proteins. They showed that fibril formation is preceded by the birth of large protein clusters, mirroring the crystallization of polymers. Crucially, dissolving these clusters helped to prevent fibrils forming in solution. Their work signals a paradigm shift for