202 RESULTS
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-06-05 Research News BACE inhibitors, with their ability to squelch Aβ production, seemed like a promising preventative therapy for Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, their trials foundered, with some of them worsening cognition in an apparent class effect (Dec
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-06-05 Research News Astrocytes have been implicated in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, but these beautiful, star-shaped cells are notoriously difficult to study. Animal models are little help, because their astrocytes are quite different from
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-06-02 Research News Scientists have linked loss-of-function mutations in SORL1 to overproduction of Aβ and to early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Now, in the June 2 Cell Reports, researchers led by Jessica Young at the University of Washington, Seattle, report tha
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-06-01 Research News Synapses are central in Alzheimer’s disease, but they are hard to study. The microscopic techniques that offer a glimpse at these tiny structures require expensive equipment and laborious ultra-sectioning of brain tissue, and cover only very
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-30 Research News Tangles creep through a person’s brain as Alzheimer’s disease progresses; alas, researchers disagree about what drives the spread of this pathology. In the May 26 Nature Communications, a collaborative group led by Alan Evans at McGill Unive
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-29 Research News Researchers have devised a new way to sneak therapeutic cargo across the blood-brain barrier. Into the constant region of a human IgG1 antibody, they slid a domain that latches onto receptors that carry transferrin into the brain. On the oth
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-28 Research News Induced pluripotent stem cell models of Alzheimer’s disease have become important because they allow researchers to study human neurons carrying AD mutations. However, iPSC lines take weeks to establish, require viral vectors to reprogram ad
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-27 Research News In the May 27 Nature, scientists publish the first-ever cryo-electron microscopy of α-synuclein fibrils. With resolution down to the atomic level, the analysis revealed two types of asymmetric fibril, each comprising two different protofibri
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-26 Research News In carriers of a pathogenic mutation in presenilin 1, plasma levels of the neurodegeneration marker neurofilament light (NfL) start to diverge from those in noncarriers more than two decades prior to when Alzheimer’s symptoms begin. That was
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-23 Research News RNA sequencing studies of postmortem human brain samples have generated massive datasets implicating all manner of biological functions in Alzheimer’s disease. But how do these findings translate to proteins—where the biological rubber meets
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-23 Research News Part 2 of 2 For decades, studies of pulmonary and vascular systems dominated the air-pollution-research landscape. Researchers paid scant attention to the brain, which they considered safely ensconced behind the blood-brain barrier. But the
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-22 Research News Part 1 of 2 As coronavirus lockdowns have led to noticeably clearer skies above many metropolitan areas, people are beginning to wonder anew about the effects of air pollution. Traffic and industrial exhaust have long been linked to respirat
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-22 Research News Many research groups study tau misfolding and propagation using in vitro models, but interpreting findings from artificial systems can be dicey. In a preprint on bioRxiv, researchers led by Eckhard Mandelkow at the German Center for Neurodeg
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-15 Research News When Kevin Eggan of Harvard University decided to raise some C9ORF72-deficient mice down the road at MIT’s Broad Institute, he had little inkling of the can of worms—or microbes—that he was about to open. At Harvard, the C9-deficient mice sp
RESEARCH NEWS 2020-05-15 Research News The particular type of tangle found in Alzheimer’s is unique to this disease, making tau PET a highly specific marker. In the May 11 JAMA Neurology, researchers led by Oskar Hansson at Skåne University Hospital in Malmö, Sweden, reinforce th
