The not-for-profit Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Therapy Development Foundation (ALS-TDF), based in Newton, Massachusetts, has entered into a collaboration with University of Chicago stem cell researcher Kimonobu Sugaya...
The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is cropping up with increasing frequency in discussions of Alzheimer's disease therapy. It is an ever-present concern for researchers hoping to introduce therapies...
In the 24 June PNAS Early Edition, researchers report that a biologically ancient defense mechanism for ridding the central nervous system (CNS) of invading pathogens also damages neurons...
Soon after the World Health Organization bestowed its approval on the protein 14-3-3 as an important diagnostic marker for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), reports began to come in that its sensitivity and specificity might not be all that was advertised...
In this month's Nature Cell Biology, Frank Lezoualc'h and colleagues at the University of South Paris report that serotonin, or 5-hydroxy tryptamine (5HT), mediates sAPPα release through a cyclic AMP (cAMP) signaling pathway independent of protein kinase A (PKA)...
Synapses—those specialized junctions that facilitate transmission of action potentials between neurons—are composed of a myriad of highly sophisticated proteins. Some, like neurexins, have yet to be fully characterized...
Recent evidence has enhanced the image of astrocytes, suggesting these glial cells are a source for stem cells, and that they mop up Aβ. But online publications in this week's PNAS and Nature Neuroscience indicate that astrocytes also are a major impediment to...
A report in this week's PNAS suggests that neurogenesis can occur in response to neurodegeneration in human brains. Principal author Richard Faull and colleagues at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, report that significantly more neuronal proliferation occurs...
Tao et al. and Honbou et al. recently reported the crystal structure of DJ-1 at resolutions of 1.8 and 1.95 Ångstroms, respectively (see <a href="/news/research-news/spotlight-dj-crystal-structure-solved-parkinsons-protein">ARF related news story</a>), but the latest report by Greg Petsko and colleagues in the July 10 PNAS Early Edition online, tops that by almost another Ångstrom.
Some foods only reveal their flavor after you add a dash of salt. Similarly, say the authors of an article in the July 18 issue of Science, some genes only show an association with disease when environmental factors are taken into account...
If the old saying that elephants never forget is true, then it may be because in mammals, synaptic branches laid down in early life are stable into middle age...
Scientists have long puzzled over the following conundrum: If the activity of a protein solution drops by half, have half the molecules completely lost activity, or have all the proteins lost half their activity? The answer, most likely, is that...
Presenilin, the enzyme that proteolytically cleaves amyloid-β precursor protein (APP) and Notch, also processes the p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR)...
Genetic polymorphisms in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC)—a group of proteins that help the immune system distinguish self from non-self—can profoundly influence the immune response mounted against an amyloid β vaccine...
The scientist who helped discover one of the few drugs currently approved for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease has received the $100,000 Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Award for 2003...