Category Health/Medical

These are reactive microglia (red+green) in irradiated mouse hippocampus. (Blue stain is cell nuclei for anatomical reference.) Credit: Rosi lab / UCSF

Novel drug protects memory function in mice exposed to simulated cosmic radiation. Planning a trip to Mars? You’ll want to remember your anti-radiation pills. NASA and private space companies like SpaceX plan to send humans to the red planet within the next 15 years – but among the major challenges facing future crewed space missions is how to protect astronauts from the dangerous cosmic radiation of deep space.

Now the lab of UCSF neuroscientist Susanna Rosi, PhD, has identified the first potential treatment for the brain damage caused by exposure to cosmic rays – a drug that prevents memory impairment in mice exposed to simulated space ra...

Image reveals Purkinje cells (gray) and their dendrites, as well as an accumulation of protein deposits (red dots). Credit: Ackerman Lab/UC San Diego

Protein ‘proofreading’ errors lead to neurodegenerative disease. UCSD researchers found that the ‘Ankrd16’ gene acts like a failsafe in proofreading and correcting errors to avoid the abnormal production of improper proteins. Usually, the information transfer from gene to protein is carefully controlled – biologically “proofread” and corrected – to avoid the production of improper proteins...

A human-like 3D-printed smart gel walks underwater. Credit: Daehoon Han/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

New technology has biomedical, soft robot and other applications. Engineers have created a 3D-printed smart gel that walks underwater and grabs objects and moves them. The watery creation could lead to soft robots that mimic sea animals like the octopus, which can walk underwater and bump into things without damaging them. It may also lead to artificial heart, stomach and other muscles, along with devices for diagnosing diseases, detecting and delivering drugs and performing underwater inspections.

Soft materials like the smart gel are flexible, often cheaper to manufacture than hard materials and can be miniaturized...

AHR limits microglial pro-inflammatory transcriptional responses during EAE.

A study published this week in Nature sheds new light on the connection between the gut and the brain, untangling the complex interplay that allows the byproducts of microorganisms living in the gut to influence the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have been using both animal models and human cells from patients to tease out the key players involved in the gut-brain connection as well as in the crosstalk between immune cells and brain cells. Their new publication defines a pathway that may help guide therapies for multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases.

The new research focuses on the influence of gut microbes on two types of cells that play...