Screening of a neuronal cell model of tau pathology for therapeutic compounds.

We have developed a cell-based phenotypic automated high-content screening approach for N2a cells expressing the pro-aggregant repeat domain of tau protein (tau), which allows analysis of a chemogenomic library of 1649 compounds for their effect on the inhibition or stimulation of intracellular tau aggregation. We identified several inhibitors and stimulators of aggregation and achieved a screening reproducibility >85% for all data. We identified 18 potential inhibitors (= 1.