RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-28 Research News What’s the point of living longer if you spend your extra years in poor health? A new study published February 26 in Nature discovered that reining in the expression of two epigenetic regulators could extend the “healthspan”—as opposed to me
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2020-02-26 Conference Coverage Even though, overall, Alzheimer’s disease robs all people it afflicts of mind and memory, it progresses differently in different people. Its specific symptoms, their sequence, and how fast they worsen can vary quite a bit from one pers
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2020-02-26 Conference Coverage As the field of Alzheimer’s and related dementias is trying to go all-in on detecting—and targeting—tau pathology, scientists are still grappling with exactly how to deploy PET imaging in the effort. A still-new, and still-limited set
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-24 Research News Another gene therapy for a central nervous system disorder has posted positive results. The Phase 1/2 trial enrolled 18 men with X-linked retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a disease of retinal degeneration that leads to blindness. Robert MacLaren o
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-21 Research News As the body’s most energy- and oxygen-hungry organ, the brain also happens to be the most dynamic, and it's devilishly complex. How does nutrient-rich blood wend its way through the vast labyrinth of cerebral blood vessels to nourish th
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-18 Research News It may seem counterintuitive, but could BACE2 protect against amyloidosis, rather than contribute to it? This is the central question in a manuscript posted to bioRxiv. Non-amyloidogenic processing of APP, and Aβ peptides, by BACE2 may count
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-14 Research News Evidence continues to pile up that filaments of aggregated tau form unique strains in different tauopathies. Why is that? A paper published online in Cell on February 6 suggests that post-translational modifications help decide a filament’s
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-14 Research News While the vast majority of myelin sheaths in the brain are laid down early in life, a pair of new studies published February 10 in Nature Neuroscience reveal that a fresh supply of the fatty axonal conductor is required to establish and main
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-13 Research News Nighttime wakefulness and wandering are common symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease, but doctors hesitate to prescribe sleep-enhancing drugs because those have been linked to worsening cognition and falls. Results from a Phase 3 trial published i
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-10 Research News DIAN participants and investigators today are grappling with difficult news. A topline analysis of the first Phase 2/3 clinical trial that the DIAN-TU trials platform mounted for carriers of dominantly inherited Alzheimer’s disease mutations
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2020-02-08 Conference Coverage Part 2 of a 2-part story Scientists are increasingly optimistic that PET tracer UCB-J, which recognizes a presynaptic vesicle protein, can reliably detect synapse loss in the Alzheimer’s brain (see Part 1 of this series). And it’s not
CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2020-02-07 Conference Coverage Part 1 of a 2-part story. A PET tracer that lights up synapses is able to detect a loss of connectivity across the Alzheimer’s brain, according to new research presented at the Human Amyloid Imaging conference, held January 15–17 in Mi
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-07 Research News ApoE4’s rap sheet just grew longer. Not only does ApoE’s notorious allele accelerate Aβ and tau pathology, it also drives the toxic aggregation of α-synuclein, according to two studies published February 5 in Science Translational Medicine.
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-06 Research News Like Aβ oligomers, soluble aggregates of tau and α-synuclein bind to cellular prion protein, poisoning neurons, according to a study published in Acta Neuropathologica. Using a standardized procedure to produce soluble aggregates of these th
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-02-05 Research News The few people who carry two copies of the ApoE2 allele are blessed with remarkable protection against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published February 3 in Nature Communications. While the E2 allele has long been known to hedge