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One needs to remember that the most popular mechanism causing cell death in KD is due to the accumulation fragments of the mutated androgen receptor (AR) protein. The cells apparently cannot adequately remove "used" up AR and fragments accumulate - and it is thought that these fragments cause the neuronal cell death. Normal AR is removed using the proteasome (think of the shredder analogy from my talks). Another pathway for removing used up proteins is a process call autophagy. Normally, AR does not go through this process as the proteasome seems more than capable of removing the AR. The mutant AR does not get degraded adequately by the proteasome and it has been demonstrated (for example, by Paul Taylor) that if one can activate the process of autophagy, one can remove the AR fragments and prevent cell death. The LaSpada paper essentially confirms this result, but using a cell culture not fruit flies. They found that by omitting certain chemicals from the media in which the cells grow, one can increase autophagy and apparently, the chemical whose omission activated autophagy was the hormone, insulin. When one omitted insulin from the media of cultured KD cells, the cells lived longer. I think that the main value of this work at this time is that it confirms the concept that the activation of autophagy prolongs the life of cells with the mutant AR.