The synergistic interplay of Amyloid beta and tau proteins in Alzheimer's disease: a compartmental mathematical model

Abstract

The purpose of this Note is to present and discuss some mathematical results concerning a compartmental model for the synergistic interplay of Amyloid beta and tau proteins in the onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease. We model the possible mechanisms of interaction between the two proteins by a system of Smoluchowski equations for the Amyloid beta concentration, an evolution equation for the dynamics of misfolded tau and a kinetic-type transport equation for a function taking into accout the degree of malfunctioning of neurons. We provide a well-posedness results for our system of equations. This work extends results obtained in collaboration with M.Bertsch, B.Franchi and A.Tosin.