Extending in-vitro evidence that insulin-degrading enzyme (IDE) may be involved in the clearance of the Aβ peptide, a report in the 12 March issue of PNAS finds that IDE knockout mice have higher cerebral accumulation of both Aβ and the AβP intracellular domain...
The family of neuregulin-1 growth and differentiation factors is rapidly piquing the interest of researchers in areas ranging from schizophrenia to Alzheimer's disease...
The normal role of Aβ is intimately tied up with synaptic electrophysiology. On the flip side, disturbances in the regulatory interplay between synaptic activity and AβP processing could yield clues to a better explanation of how...
In an advanced online publication in this week's Nature Medicine, doctors report the first autopsy of a patient enrolled in trials for the ill-fated Alzheimer's disease (AD) vaccine...
Researchers have used the well-established Potts model—an algorithm mathematicians and biologists use to measure how individual entities behave in relation to their neighbors—to help map the spatial organization of neurons...
While recent evidence suggests that astrocytes may help degrade β amyloid, a report in the March 7 online Journal of Biological Chemistry suggests they may also help produce it...
The stem cells populating the white matter tracts in human brain can generate neurons, apparently just by being removed from an environment that limits them to a glial fate...
Oxidative stress has been implicated as a factor in the neurodegeneration that leads to a variety of neurologic disorders, including Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases...
Mitochondrial malfunction underlies the pathological damage seen in fruit fly models of Parkinson's disease, researchers report in this week's PNAS online. The paper adds to the growing body of evidence linking this intracellular organelle to neurodegeneration...
One of the most prestigious honors for researchers in Alzheimer’s, Niemann-Pick disease, and related disorders this year went jointly to David Holtzman of Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and Ashley Bush of Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown...
A cytokine called leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) plays a critical role in adult neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb in vivo, according to a report in the current Journal of Neuroscience...
Passive antibody immunization against prion protein prevents the spread of clinical disease to the brain of mice, even though the antibody works primarily by reducing prion replication in peripheral tissues, including the spleen. This is the astonishing news in a report in today’s Nature...
Two research groups at Columbia University's Taub Institute have discovered new molecular partners for parkin and α-synuclein—proteins that, when mutated, cause early-onset familial forms of Parkinson's disease...
Astrocytes may play an active role in degrading amyloid-β (Aβ), the peptide found in the amyloid plaques that clog the intracellular space in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease...