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    Alzheimer’s disease tagged posts

    Nanodevices for the Brain could thwart formation of Alzheimer’s Plaques

    May 2, 2020, Categories  Biology/Biotechnology, Health/Medical

    Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images of the porous silica nanodevices. The exposed amount of surface area provides high opportunity to attach the peptide-attracting antibody fragments. (Image by Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory.)
    Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images of the porous silica nanodevices. The exposed amount of surface area provides high opportunity to attach the peptide-attracting antibody fragments. (Image by Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory.)

    Researchers designed a nanodevice with the potential to prevent peptides from forming dangerous plaques in the brain in order to halt development of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, affecting one in 10 people over the age of 65. Scientists are engineering nanodevices to disrupt processes in the brain that lead to the disease.

    People who are affected by Alzheimer’s disease have a specific type of plaque, made of self-assembled molecules called β-amyloid (Aβ) pep...

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    Gene Variant Staves off Alzheimer’s in some people

    April 15, 2020, Categories  Biology/Biotechnology, Health/Medical

    Michael Greicius is the senior author of a study whose findings may help drug developers better identify treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
    Norbert von der Groeben

    A substantial fraction of the estimated 15% of Americans carrying the high-risk gene variant of Alzheimer’s are protected to some degree from Alzheimer’s disease by a variant of the other gene. (A gene will often come in a variety of versions, or variants, that can produce different traits.)

    The findings also may help drug developers better identify clinical trial participants and treatments for what, despite billions of dollars spent in pursuit of effective therapies, remains a disease without a cure.

    About 5 million Americans – including roughly 1 in 10 people age 65 or older and one-third of those age 85 or older – have sy...

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    Alzheimer ‘Tau’ protein far surpasses Amyloid in predicting toll on brain tissue

    January 4, 2020, Categories  Biology/Biotechnology, Health/Medical

    Brain MRI scans
    Tau PET brain scans (green) in early clinical-stage Alzheimer’s patients accurately predict the location of brain atrophy measured by MRI 1–2 years later (magenta). Amyloid PET imaging (blue) does not predict the location of either tau or future brain atrophy.

    Tau PET brain imaging could launch precision medicine era for Alzheimer’s disease. Brain imaging of pathological tau-protein “tangles” reliably predicts the location of future brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s patients a year or more in advance, according to a new study by scientists at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center...

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    Synthetic Peptide can Inhibit Toxicity, Aggregation of protein in Alzheimer’s disease

    April 21, 2019, Categories  Biology/Biotechnology, Health/Medical

    a chemical structure of a peptide

    Ball-and-stick model of the structure of AP407, one of the synthetic alpha sheet peptides designed by the research team to inhibit toxic oligomers of amyloid beta.Shea et al., PNAS, 2019

    Researchers have developed synthetic peptides that target and inhibit the small, toxic protein aggregates that are thought to trigger Alzheimer’s disease. Neurons in the human brain make a protein called amyloid beta. Such proteins on their own, called monomers of amyloid beta, perform important tasks for neurons. But in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid beta monomers have abandoned their jobs and joined together. First, they form oligomers – small clumps of up to a dozen proteins – then longer strands and finally large deposits called plaques...

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