Plein Center faculty member, Abhi Nath, PhD, was a corresponding author on a paper published in PNAS examining small heat shock proteins, which play a vital role in preventing protein aggregation that can otherwise lead to Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. In this paper, investigators from the University of Washington’s Departments of Biochemistry and Medicinal Chemistry discovered a general mechanism by which small heat shock proteins can be activated, revealing a possible avenue for therapeutic discovery.