Alzheimer’s disease tagged posts

Neural stem cells (green) migrate throughout an injured brain site in DLB mice and begin to differentiate into astrocytes (red), leading to improved motor and cognitive function. Blurton-Jones lab

DLB is the 2nd-most common type of age-related dementia after Alzheimer’s disease and is characterized by the accumulation of a protein alpha-synuclein that collects into spherical Lewy bodies – which also accumulate in related disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. This pathology, in turn, impairs the normal function of neurons, leading to alterations in critical brain chemicals and neuronal communication and, eventually, to cell death.

One day transplantation of neural stem cells into human patients might help overcome the motor and cognitive impairments of DLB...

Highlights •Lack of neuronal IFN-β-IFNAR signaling causes brain Lewy body accumulation •IFN-β deficiency causes late-stage autophagy block and thereby α-synuclein aggregation •IFN-β promotes neuronal autophagy and α-synuclein clearance •Ifnb gene therapy prevents dopaminergic neuron loss in a familial PD model

Non-inheritable PD may be caused by functional changes in the immune regulating gene Interferon-beta. Treatment with Interferon-beta-gene therapy successfully prevented neuronal death and disease effects in an experimental model of PD.

7-10 million people worldwide are living with PD. More than half of PD patients develop progressive disease showing signs of dementia similar to Alzheimer’s disease...

A human donor Alzheimer’s disease brain tissue stained with an agent called ‘congo-red’, which allows for the visualization of amyloid-beta plaques (red) in the brain and surrounding blood vessels. Blue stains show the nuclei of the cells in the brain. Credit: Dr Matthew Campbell, 2015

Researchers believe that periodic clearance of a specific protein across the blood brain barrier could hold tremendous potential for new therapies. Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have shed light on a fundamental mechanism underlying the development of Alzheimer’s disease, which could lead to new forms of therapy for those living with the condition.

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized, in part, by the build-up of a small protein (‘amyloid-beta’) in the brains of patients...

In recent years, generating see-through tissue – a process called optical clearing -has become a goal for many researchers in life sciences because of its potential to reveal complex structural details of our bodies, organs, and cells – both healthy and diseased -when combined with advanced microscopy imaging techniques.

“The usefulness of optical clearing techniques can be measured by their ability to gather accurate 3D structural information that cannot be readily achieved through traditional 2D methods,” explains Atsushi Miyawaki. “Here, we achieved this goal using a new procedure, and collected data that may resolve several current issues regarding the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease...