Evolutionarily conserved regulators of tau identify targets for new therapies.

Tauopathies are neurodegenerative diseases that involve the pathological accumulation of tau proteins; in this family are Alzheimer disease, corticobasal degeneration, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, among others. Hypothesizing that reducing this accumulation could mitigate pathogenesis, we performed a cross-species genetic screen targeting 6,600 potentially druggable genes in human cells and Drosophila. We found and validated 83 hits in cells and further validated 11 hits in the mouse brain.