As the political debate about stem cell research heats up once again, scientists continue to wrestle with the most fundamental questions about these cells: Where do they come from? Are the stem cells...
It has been clear for a number of years that iron accumulates in areas such as the hippocampus in Alzheimer's disease and the substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease. Just what this means is...
Thirty European Alzheimer's Disease Centers of Excellence and one nongovernmental organization, Alzheimer Europe, have established a network to carry out multicentre interventional trials under the auspices of the European Commission...
It has become part of the standard lore on Alzheimer's
that a series of enzymes—dubbed α-, β-, and γ-secretase—successively chops away at the APP cell-surface protein...
Using different approaches, two recent animal studies have reported some success toward achieving a goal common to several experimental AD therapies: Both methods significantly lowered the Aβ burden in the brain...
Most research trying to coax adult central nervous system neurons into repairing nerve injury focuses on the environment through which regenerating neurons have to extend new growth cones and axons. A study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience approaches this problem differently...
Researchers at Japan's Juntendo University School of
Medicine report in tomorrow's Cell that they have identified a novel substrate for the parkin E3 ligase function...
The two most prominent genes linked to inherited,
monogenic Parkinson's disease—α-synuclein and parkin—are generally thought to be unconnected to each other because the forms of PD they
cause are clinically and neuropathologically different...
The γ-secretase enzyme activity is a therapeutic target in Alzheimer's disease. Yet its promise of lowering the Aβ42
burden has been under a cloud since1999, when Bart De Strooper and other scientists found that the enzyme...
The gene mutation that causes Huntington's disease has been known for many years, yet the function of the encoded protein, huntingtin, and the pathogenic mechanism of the mutant protein, have remained frustratingly elusive...
Harvard researchers have expressed the wildtype and mutant forms of human tau protein in Drosophila, creating a new model for one aspect of Alzheimer’s
disease pathology as well as for tauopathies...
Abnormal forms of the prion protein are thought to be the infective agent responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease") and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)...
Obesity and its frequent cousin, insulin-resistant
diabetes, so clearly increase the risk for atherosclerosis that the whole disease complex has been called metabolic syndrome...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS; also known as Lou
Gehrig's disease) is the most common motor neuron disease in humans, affecting one in 1,000. It results in a progressive loss of motor neuron function, leading to...
Aggregates of proteins are a common feature in many
neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, fronto-temporal dementia and ALS...