At the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Anthony Fink and M. Zhu of the University of California, Santa Cruz, reported that baicalein, a flavanoid used in traditional Chinese medicine, binds tightly to α-synuclein and even disaggregates...
Is the cycle of life—new lives born even as the old die—to be found in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's patients? A study in this week’s online PNAS suggests just this, and poses the question of...
As evidence mounts against oligomers as culprits of Aβ neurotoxicity, their only defense hinges on the possibility that they may have some normal physiological function—even a slightly neurotrophic effect—on cognition which has yet to be characterized...
Notwithstanding some redeeming features, soluble Aβ oligomers have an overwhelmingly bad reputation as suspected mediators of synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s. A number of accusing fingers...
Eric Parker from the Schering-Plough Research Institute in Kenilworth, New Jersey, reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans what many may have heard already: At least some γ-secretase inhibitors cause mechanism-based side effects so severe as to disqualify them from clinical testing...
The potential of RNA interference is exciting, offering the possibility of shutting down expression of specific proteins—perhaps in specific cells—for both investigative and therapeutic purposes...
Antibodies have proven to be extremely versatile tools for detecting proteins both in vitro and in vivo, but they need to be coupled to an additional label, such as an enzyme, radioisotope, or fluorophore. Now enter the "fluorobody," a molecule that combines...
Are you sometimes tempted to view APP and presenilin merely as raw material and machine for Aβ production, respectively? If so, think again, because that narrow spotlight is opening up to a broader understanding of how these two proteins function and might contribute to Alzheimer’s...
At the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience held last week in New Orleans, at least two dozen presentations dealt with current efforts to develop a vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease. This bold approach suffered a setback last year when...
The role of inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease—beyond serious dispute, yet still enigmatic—gained much attention at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held last week in New Orleans. While immunotherapy labs are retooling their approaches ...
Dopaminergic, serotonergic, and glutamatergic: three CNS neurotransmitter pathways that are distinct. Or are they? A paper in this week's Science reveals that all three pathways eventually lead to...
In this month's Aging Cell, researchers show that the herpes simplex virus (HSV), traveling away from the neuronal cell body along axons, is associated with the amyloid precursor protein (APP)...
After years as a potential but peripheral suspect in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, copper (Cu) is lobbying for a new designation—potential therapy! Two studies in the November 17 PNAS Early Edition suggest that copper can...
In this month's Nature Genetics, two papers reveal that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the binding site for a single protein called Runt-related transcription factor 1 (RUNX1) can lead to either psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis...
More than 50 years ago, U.S. Navy physicians stationed on Guam found a shocking rate of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS—about 50 to 100 times higher than expected. Now, a new paper may revive one of the original ideas: that ingestion of...