Begone 2020: Despite COVID, Alzheimer’s Research Advanced
Confronting unprecedented challenges this past year, scientists found ways to tide their research over and keep clinical trials mostly on track.
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Confronting unprecedented challenges this past year, scientists found ways to tide their research over and keep clinical trials mostly on track.
This pathway may transmogrify microglia during neurodegeneration, without the help of TREM2.
Overexpressing the endosomal activator in neurons not only caused those organelles to swell, but also bungled synaptic transmission, goaded hyperphosphorylation of tau, and destroyed cholinergic neurons.
Among people with early AD, the monoclonal antibody wiped out Aβ plaques and slowed cognitive and functional decline by a third, relative to placebo.
High amyloid burden and neuroinflammation, neuronal excitability, and tangles and oligodendrocyte loss distinguish the disease types.
In cultured cells, lysosomal activity was necessary to enable tau seeds to break out of internalized exosomes and trigger the aggregation of tau in the cytosol.
The blood-based marker may be far more scalable and cost-effective for tracking the disease than PET imaging and CSF biomarkers.
By tracing the transcriptomes of neurons that wither early and late in the course of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers peg subpopulations of excitatory neurons in entorhinal cortex as selectively vulnerable to tau. Reactive astrocytes aid and abet.
Aging macrophages and microglia poorly burn glucose and enter an inflammatory state. Revving their metabolism preserved synapses and memory in mice. What does prostaglandin have to do with it?
In a mouse model of cortical multiple sclerosis, microglia and monocytes swooped in to gobble up synapses when dendritic calcium rose. Spines grew back once inflammation subsided.
Plaque-ridden 5xFAD mice were no better at fending off an intracerebral herpes virus infection than their wild-type counterparts. The virus was not to be found within Aβ plaques and did not spur plaques to form.
Despite plaques and tangles in the brain, this group, on average, maintains their cognitive skills over two to four years, suggesting the presence of resilience factors.
By comparing protein changes with GWAS data, scientists identified new links to AD. This method can unearth genes that otherwise fall short of genome-wide significance.
In response to an FDA request, the drug’s sponsor submitted new data analyses. The agency moved the action date to June 7.
Among 14 familial Alzheimer’s APP mutations, two don’t change the Aβ42/Aβ40 ratio, but all of them yield long peptides of 45 to 49 residues that hide out in the membrane.