neurodegenerative disease Archives

Understanding neonatal brain injury proteinopathy: Implications for adult-onset neurodegenerative disease

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Neonatal encephalopathy is damage to the brain caused by the disruption of its blood supply before and during childbirth and other reasons such as prematurity and maternal-foetal infection. It can often lead to death. Survivors can have long-term cognitive, emotional, and behavioural effects. Lee J Martin, Professor of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and Pathology at Johns Hopkins University, USA, […]

Curing the incurable: RNA isoforms may hold the key to defeating Alzheimer’s disease

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Alzheimer’s disease causes excessive neuronal cell death.

Groundbreaking research on RNA isoforms in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has revealed another layer of genetic complexity that has been previously overlooked. Using cutting-edge sequencing technology, Dr. Mark Ebbert and colleagues at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky, USA, performed a detailed analysis of RNA isoforms in the human brain. They discovered multiple, previously unknown RNA isoforms […]

Using genetic signatures to better classify spinal neurons

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Professor Samuel Pfaff builds on previous research to develop genetic tags that can be used to classify spinal neurons

Professor Samuel Pfaff at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies builds on previous work revealing important principles related to neural development, gene regulation, axon guidance and connectivity, and spinal motor circuit function. Spinal neurons were traditionally grouped into around 12 cardinal classes – but this doesn’t describe their full diversity. Now, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies team has developed […]

Regulators of protein degradation as potential treatments for neurodegenerative disease

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Beta amyloid plays a fundamental role in disease pathogenesis in Alzheimer’s.

Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, are characterised by the accumulation of misfolded and damaged protein aggregates. Normally, proteins that are damaged or malfunctioning are destroyed by the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS). However, the UPS itself is impaired in several instances of neurodegenerative diseases. Dr David Smith and his team at the School of Medicine, University of West […]

What can peptide-coated nanoparticles tell us about the causes of dementia?

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Kazushige Yokoyama, Professor of Chemistry at the State University of New York Geneseo College, investigates how peptides interact. Along with Akane Ichiki, an undergraduate student at the institution, his team have been investigating the peptides involved in fibrillogenesis, the process which occurs in the brain to form aggregates responsible for some of the symptoms involved in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s […]

Benefits of a diet with walnuts in Alzheimer’s disease

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Alzheimer’s disease is a severe neurodegenerative disorder, responsible for 60-70% of cases of dementia. The most common symptoms are memory loss, disorientation and loss of cognition. To date, there is no known cure for this disease, but Dr Abha Chauhan, based at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities, New York, USA, has shown how supplementation with walnuts in […]

Fruit flies help shed light on drug discovery for ALS

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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating and incurable neurodegenerative disease that affects people in adulthood. It leads to the death of neurons involved in muscle control, eventually affecting almost all facets of the body, including walking, swallowing and breathing. Drs Nancy Bonini and Leeanne McGurk at the University of Pennsylvania are using fruit flies, mammalian cellular systems like neurons, […]