A collaboration between Warwick researchers Hualong Song and Peter Scott and the team of Xiaogang Qu (Academy of Sciences, Changchun, China) has revealed that triplex metallohelices inhibit aggregation of a protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease. The effects are structure and enantiomer-dependent. A wide range of techniques are used to probe and model the interaction, and the picture emerging is that these completely synthetic iron-based helical assemblies behave like small peptides. Treatment of nematode worms which suffer from an Alzheimer's-like pathology led to a significant improvemnt in lifespan.