Newsline — Friday, October 17, 2014 9:00
Healthy Lifestyles May Cut Stroke Risk in Half for Women
Stroke-fighting Drug Offers Potential Treatment for TBI
Thursday, October 16, 2014 13:00
In a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the Henry Ford Neuroscience Institute found that the brain’s limited ability to repair itself after trauma can be enhanced when treated with the drug tPA (tissue plasminogen activator). Commonly called a clot-buster, tPA is the only FDA-approved treatment for acute ischemic stroke. It has been known for some time that stroke damage can be reduced if tPA is given intravenously within 4.5 hours. However, tPA administration through the bloodstream also has potentially harmful side effects, including swelling of the brain and hemorrhage. More recently, researchers found that the effective treatment window could be extended to as much as two weeks for lab rats dosed with tPA in a nasal spray, while avoiding the harmful side effects of intravenous injection. Although scientists do not yet fully understand how it works, earlier research has shown that drugs administered through the nose directly target both the brain and the spinal cord. The most recent findings suggest that tPA has the potential to be a noninvasive treatment…
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Researchers Find Unexpected New Drug to Treat Parkinson’s Disease
Thursday, October 16, 2014 9:00
In a new study published in the journal Neurotherapeutics, researchers from UCLA found that a drug being evaluated to treat an entirely different disorder also helped slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease in mice. The study found that the drug, AT2101, which has also been studied for Gaucher disease (a rare genetic disorder), improved motor function, stopped inflammation in the brain and reduced levels of alpha-synuclein, a protein critically involved in Parkinson’s disease. Researchers determined that there may be a close relationship between Gaucher disease and Parkinson’s due to an enzyme called β-glucocerebrosidase, or GCase. “This is the first time a compound targeting Gaucher disease has been tested in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease and was shown to be effective,” said the study’s senior author. “The promising findings in this study suggest that further investigation of this compound in Parkinson’s disease is warranted.” The drug AT2101 is a first-generation “pharmacological chaperone” — a drug that can bind malfunctioning, mutated enzymes and lead them through the cell to their normal location, which allows the enzymes…
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Caring for Horses Eases Symptoms of Dementia
Wednesday, October 15, 2014 13:00
In a study published in the journal Anthrozoös, researchers from Ohio State University found that equine therapy — a treatment used today for children and teens who have emotional and development disorders — could also work for adults who are suffering from forms of dementia. The study found that people with Alzheimer’s were able to safely groom, feed and walk horses under supervision — and the experience improved their mood and made them less likely to resist care of become upset later in the day. An associate professor from Ohio State stated that equine therapy could supplement more common forms of animal therapy involving dogs and cats, and provide a unique way to ease the symptoms of dementia without drugs. During the study, participants visited horses on a farm once a week for a month, so that every participant had four visits total. They groomed and bathed the horses, walked them and fed them buckets of grass. There was a clear improvement in dementia-related behavior among the participants who visited the farm. To track behavior, the researchers…
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Mouse Study Offers New Clues to Cognitive Decline
Wednesday, October 15, 2014 9:00
In a recent study published in The Journal of Neuroscience and in The EMBO Journal, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that certain types of brain cells prefer one specific energy source over others. The findings have implications for understanding the cognitive decline seen in aging and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. Studying mice, researchers found that a specific energy source—called NAD—is important in cells responsible for maintaining the overall structure of the brain and for performing complex cognitive functions. NAD is a molecule that harvests energy from nutrients in food and converts it into a form cells can use. “We are interested in how cells make NAD and what implications that has for cellular function, especially in the context of aging and longevity,” said the study’s senior author. “We know, for example, NAD levels decrease with age in tissues such as muscle and fat. We wanted to find out if the same is true in the brain.” The researchers looked at two types of brain cells:…
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Brain Noises Found to Nurture Synapses
Tuesday, October 14, 2014 14:30
A recent study conducted by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center found that a long-overlooked form of neuron-to-neuron communication — called miniature neurotransmission — plays an essential role in the development of synapses. The findings, discovered in fruit flies, raise the possibility that abnormalities in miniature neurotransmission may contribute to neurodevelopmental diseases. “These miniature events — or minis — have been found at every type of synapse that has been studied. However, since minis don’t induce neurons to fire, people assumed they were inconsequential, just background noise,” said the study’s lead author. Recent cell-culture studies, however, have suggested that minis do have some function, and even their own regulatory mechanisms. To learn more, the research team developed new genetic tools to selectively up- or down-regulate evoked and miniature neurotransmission in fruit flies. The researchers found that when both types of neurotransmissions were blocked, synapse development was abnormal. However, inhibiting or stimulating evoked neurotransmission alone had no effect on synaptic development. The researchers are currently looking into whether minis have a functional role in the mature…
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Role of Calcium in Familial Alzheimer’s Disease Clarified
Tuesday, October 14, 2014 10:30
In a recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found mutations in two proteins associated with familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD). The two proteins interact with a calcium release channel in an intracellular compartment. Mutant forms of these proteins that cause FAD, but not the normal proteins, result in exaggerated calcium signaling in the cell. Currently therapies for Alzheimer’s disease include drugs that treat the symptoms of cognitive loss and dementia, and drugs that address that pathology of Alzheimer’s are experimental. The new research suggests that approaches based on modulating calcium signaling could be explored. The two proteins, called PS1 and PS2 (presenilin 1 and 2), interact with a calcium release channel, the inositol trisphosphate receptor (IP3R), in the endoplasmic reticulum. “We set out to answer the question: Is increased calcium signaling, as a result of the presenilin-IP3R interaction, involved in the development of familial Alzheimer’s disease symptoms, including dementia and cognitive deficits?” said the lead author of the study. “And looking at…
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Grafted Stem Cells Display Growth in Spinal Cord Injury
Monday, October 13, 2014 13:35
In a recent study published in the journal Neuron, researchers reported that they were able to use human stem cells to grow brand new nerves in a rat model of spinal cord injury. The neurons grew tens of thousands of axons that extended the entire length of the spinal cord, out from the area of injury. The procedure induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are stem cells that can be driven to become a specific cell type (in this case nerve cells) to repair an experimentally damaged spinal cord. The iPSCs were made using the skin cells of an 86 year old male, demonstrating that even in an individual of advanced age, the ability of the cells to be turned into a different cell type (pluripotency) remained. The researchers were interested in using iPSCs to develop potential repair for spinal cord injury because it allows them to use stem cells taken from the person with the injury, rather than use donated cells such as human embryonic stem cells, which are foreign to the patient. This…
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U.S. Aims for TBI Clinical Trial Success
Monday, October 13, 2014 9:35
An unprecedented, public-private partnership is being launched to drive the development of better-run clinical trials that could lead to the first successful treatments for traumatic brain injury, a condition affecting not only athletes and soldiers, but also millions among the general public. Under the partnership, the research team, representing many universities, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), companies and philanthropies, will examine data from thousands of patients in order to identify effective measures of brain injury and recovery, using biomarkers from blood, new imaging equipment and software, and other tools. “TBI is really a multifaceted condition, not a single event,” said the lead investigator of the study. “TBI lags 40 to 50 years behind heart disease and cancer in terms of progress and understanding of the actual disease process and its potential aftermath. More than 30 clinical trials of potential TBI treatments have failed, and not a single drug has been approved.” The research collaborators will work directly with the FDA to come up with better methods for selecting patients for clinical trials, and better…
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Transplant Drug Could Boost the Power of Brain-tumor Treatments
Friday, October 10, 2014 13:00
Recent research, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School, found that an organ transplant drug called rapamycin could help brain-tumor patients by boosting the effects of new immune-based therapies. In an animal model, researchers showed that by adding rapamycin to an immunotherapy approach strengthened the immune response against brain-tumor cells. The drugs also increased the immune system’s “memory” cells so that they could attack the tumor if it ever reappeared. The research team plans to add rapamycin to clinical gene therapy and immunotherapy trials to improve the treatment of brain tumors. The new findings show that combining rapamycin with a gene-therapy approach enhanced the animals’ abilities to summon immune cells called CD8+ T cells to kill tumors cells directly. Due to this cytotoxic effect, the tumors shrank and the animals lived longer. To read more about this study, click here.