Insights from Cheesy Noodles Inform Neurodegenerative Disease Research

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YesDo you know how your noodles clump together when you add cheese? It’s delicious in a gooey way, with the individual noodles losing their separation. The cheesiness of your noodles is a useful model for fighting Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, according to a new study, which, though, has far more dire consequences than the texture of your lunch.

In neurodegenerative diseases, which affect approximately 8 million people in the United States, toxic accumulations of proteins cause devastating symptoms of memory loss and motor disturbances. Misfolding of proteins found in all animals makes them susceptible to accumulating in tangles and disrupting the functioning of the nervous system.

But researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland have discovered a promising treatment in a molecule called “spermine”. Spermine (named for its abundance in sperm) occurs naturally in many of our cells and plays a role in regulating cellular metabolism and gene activity.

Spermine had previously attracted attention for its effects on memory preservation and restoration in fruit flies and nematode worms. Fruit flies sometimes forget how to climb as they age, but in a 2015 study, feeding the insects spermine-like molecules helped maintain their climbing abilities and lifespan. But although the effects of spermine have been observed, the mechanism of its action remains unknown.

Read more: »What you don’t know about sperm»

By experimenting in the lab with nematode worms engineered to contain high levels of human brain proteins prone to misfolding, the team of scientists discovered that spermine causes misfolded proteins to condense into semi-liquid blobs, like boluses of cheese noodles.

The blobs are recognized and therefore purged in the body’s natural cellular recycling process – autophagy – which packages waste into membranes and breaks it down with enzymes. “Autophagy is more efficient at handling larger protein clumps,” explained the study’s lead author, Jinghui Luo, in a statement. “And spermine is, so to speak, the binding agent that brings the strands together.”

Because spermine has also been studied for its ability to treat other diseases, such as cancer, and because there are other spermine-like molecules that might be useful, researchers are using artificial intelligence to ferret them out. Luo likens the search to looking for “sauce ingredients” on noodles.

In nematode worms used as disease models, spermine treatment was able to restore normal cell functions, restore movement, and extend their lifespan. The challenge now is to see whether spermine and related molecules can “cheese” misfolded proteins in the human brain to facilitate their elimination.

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Main image: Rimma Bondarenko / Shutterstock

• Devin Reese

  Published on November 24, 2025

  Devin Reese is the editor-in-chief of Natural history and a science writer based in Alexandria, Virginia.