including studies of cancer and stem cell research, neuroscience, and the circulatory system. This month AIM Biotech will begin deploying the commercial devices to 47 research groups in 13 countries for user feedback.
#Degenerating Neurons Respond to Gene therapy Treatment for Alzheimer Disease Degenerating neurons in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) measurably responded to an experimental gene therapy in
which nerve growth factor (NGF) was injected into their brains, report researchers at University of California, San diego School of medicine in the current issue of JAMA Neurology.
The affected neurons displayed heightened growth, axonal sprouting and activation of functional markers, said lead author Mark H. Tuszynski, M d.,Ph d.,professor in the Department of Neurosciences, director of the UC San diego Translational Neuroscience
Institute and a neurologist at VA Medical center, San diego. The findings are derived from postmortem analyses of 10 patients who participated in phase
Administering NGF directly into the brain a first for treating of an adult neurodegenerative disorder was done for two reasons.
By precisely injecting NGF into targeted regions of the brain researchers could introduce the protein only to surrounding degenerating neurons.
The gene therapy approach has progressed since to phase II trials at multiple test sites. Results have not yet been released.
The participants lived one to 10 years after treatment. ll of the Alzheimer disease brains showed anatomical evidence of a growth response to the growth factor,
The development could have implications for animal research on central nervous system disorders, which has been limited due to lack of the ability to remove sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform standard assays.
The ability to analyze miniscule amounts of fluid could also promote more research on autoimmune joint diseases,
like the eyes, kidney, brain and bone. But this new research found that in certain patients with AML a type of blood cancer that affects white blood cells
Parallel experiments in an animal model revealed that removal of this part of the enhancer affected the molecular switch expression only in red blood cells, not in immune or brain cells,
stopped brain cancer in rats by delivering gene therapy through nanoparticles. The nanoparticles deliver genes for an enzyme that converts a prodrug called ganciclovir into a glioma cell killer.
and Study How Two Cells Interact Interactions between brain cells hold the key to healthy brain function and cognition,
Now, University at Buffalo researchers and their colleagues at other institutions are publishing a paper online in Nature Communications on Sept. 18 about a new method they developed to more precisely capture how brain cells interact.
The work was led by scientists at UB Hunter James Kelly Research Institute (HJKRI) who conduct research to better understand myelin,
the fatty insulator that enables communication between nerve cells. The researchers study how damage to myelin occurs
and how that damage may be repaired. The institute, part of UB New york state Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life sciences, was established in 1997 by Buffalo bills Hall of fame quarterback Jim Kelly
He died in 2005 at the age of 8. The researchers explained that cellular interactions that trigger the production of myelin are especially hard to pinpoint.
That because the crucial point of contact between two types of cells the connection between axons
along which nerve impulses travel, and glial cells, which support neurons is hidden essentially. yelin is made by a glial cell wrapping around an axon cell,
explained M. Laura Feltri, M d.,senior author on the paper and an HJKRI researcher and professor of biochemistry and neurology in the Jacobs School of medicine and Biomedical sciences at UB. o study myelin,
you really need to study both cells. The glial cell wraps like a spiral around the axon, so every time you try to study the region of contact between the two cells,
you end up studying the whole combination. It very hard to look just at the interface.
And studying this interface is critical in certain diseases she added. n Krabbe, for example, the problem is not just that there isn sufficient myelin,
but that the glial cell is not providing proper support to the neuron. But to figure out exactly what going wrong, we needed a better way to study that interface.
The new technique for achieving this involves using the second cell (the neuron) as a trigger to attract the first cell (the glial cell.
The researchers use a system with two chambers, separated by a membrane. hen the cells in the upper chamber ecognizethe cells in the bottom chamber, they kind of eachthrough the holes in the membrane for each other and touch.
are necessary for the production of myelin. The discovery will help improve the understanding of and development of new treatments for myelin diseases.
It also will make it easier to study all kinds of cellular interactions not just those in the brain. sing this method,
we can isolate the portion of a cell that comes in contact with another cell,
Feltri explained. t provides a glimpse into the social life of cells. his work has important implications for diseases of myelin such as Krabbe disease,
because the communication between glial cells and neurons is vital for neuroprotection, she said. Yannick Poitelon, Ph d.,postdoctoral research scientist at HJKRI and first author of the paper, explained that glial cells support neurons metabolically
and protect axons that can measure up to one meter in length, extending far away from the glial cell. his has profound implications for glial disease like Krabbe, Charcot-Marie Tooth, peripheral neuropathies or Multiple sclerosis,
because the dysfunction of glial cells end up impairing the interactions with neurons, which as a result suffer
and degenerate causing devastating clinical symptoms, said Poitelon. imilarly, neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington disease or Lou Gehrig's,
that were considered uniquely diseases of neurons in the past, are considered now diseases of cellular communications between neurons and glial cells.
The work was funded by the National institutes of health o
#Down syndrome Research Untangles Therapeutic Possibilities for Alzheimer More than five million Americans are living with Alzheimer disease (AD.
Of them, 400,000 also have Down syndrome. Both groups have similar looking brains with higher levels of the protein beta amyloid.
In fact, patients with Down syndrome develop the abnormal protein at twice the rate. Results of a pilot study, published in the September issue of Frontiers in Behavioral neuroscience, confirms the pathogenic role of beta amyloid in dementia as seen in both AD
and Down syndrome. eople with Down syndrome represent the world largest population of predetermined Alzheimer disease. By studying these individuals,
said principal investigator Michael Rafii, M d.,Ph d.,assistant professor of neurosciences and interim co-director of the Alzheimer Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) at UC San diego. The 3-year study
where in the brain they were located and the effects of the plaques on cognition. To quantify how much amyloid was present in the brain, the study included extensive neuroimaging such as volumetric MRI
amyloid PET, FDG PET, and retinal amyloid imaging. his study shows some of the earliest known Alzheimer disease biomarker changes in adults with Down syndrome
#Researchers Discover Method to Measure Stiffness of Arteries in the Brain UCLA researchers have discovered a noninvasive method to measure vascular compliance,
or how stiff an artery is, in the human brain, a finding that may have ramifications for preventing stroke and the early diagnoses of Alzheimer disease.
when the heart was pumping the blood into the brain, and again at the diastolic phase,
an associate professor of neurology and a researcher in the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA. ascular compliance is a useful marker for a number of cardiovascular diseases,
suggesting stiff arteries impair the blood supply to the brain. Additionally, they found artery stiffness is correlated with the stiffness of the largest artery of the human body,
#Stem Cell Research Hints at Evolution of Human brain The human cerebral cortex contains 16 billion neurons,
Now, researchers at UC San francisco have succeeded in mapping the genetic signature of a unique group of stem cells in the human brain that seem to generate most of the neurons in our massive cerebral cortex.
published Sept. 24 in the journal Cell, support the notion that these unusual stem cells may have played an important role in the remarkable evolutionary expansion of the primate brain. e want to know what it is about our genetic heritage that makes us unique,
and director of the Eli and Edyth Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. ooking at these early stages in development is the best opportunity to understand our brain evolution.
Building a brain from the inside out The grand architecture of the human cortex with its hundreds of distinct cell types, begins as a uniform layer of neural stem cells and builds itself from the inside out during several months of embryonic development.
Until recently, most of what scientists knew about this process came from studies of model organisms such as mice,
where nearly all neurons are produced by stem cells called ventricular radial glia (vrgs) that inhabit a fertile layer of tissue deep in the brain called the ventricular zone (VZ).
In 2010, Kriegstein lab discovered a new type of neural stem cell in the human brain, which they dubbed outer radial glia (orgs)
because these cells reside farther away from the nurturing ventricles, in an outer layer of the subventricular zone (osvz).
most of the neuron production was happening in the osvz rather than the familiar VZ. org stem cells are extremely rare in mice,
and look and behave quite differently from familiar ventricular radial glia. Their discovery immediately made Kriegstein
what allowed primate brains to grow to their immense size and complexity. e wanted to know more about the differences between these two different stem cell populations,
but at first we only had circumstantial evidence that these cells even made neurons. Outsider stem cells make their own niche In the new research, Pollen and co-first author Tomasz Nowakowski, Ph d,
They identified gene expression profiles typical of different types of neurons newborn neural progenitors and radial glia,
as well as molecular markers differentiating orgs and vrgs, which allowed the researchers to isolate these cells for further study.
The gene activity profiles also provided several novel insights into the biology of outer radial glia.
they lose their ability to differentiate into neurons, Kriegstein explained. But the new data reveals that orgs bring a support group with them:
and showed that these cells are prolific neuron factories. In contrast to mouse vrgs, which produce 10 to 100 daughter cells during brain development,
a single human org can produce thousands of daughter neurons, as well as glial cellson-neuronal brain cells increasingly recognized as being responsible for a broad array of maintenance functions in the brain.
New insights into brain evolution development and disease The discovery of human orgsself-renewing niche and remarkable generative capacity reinforces the idea that these cells may have been responsible for the expansion of the cerebral cortex in our primate ancestors,
the researchers said. The research also presents an opportunity to greatly improve techniques for growing brain circuits in a dish that reflect the true diversity of the human brain,
they said. Such techniques have the potential to enhance research into the origins of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders such as microcephaly, lissencephaly, autism and schizophrenia,
which are thought to affect cell types not found in the mouse models that are used often to study such diseases.
The findings may even have implications for studying glioblastoma a common brain cancer whose ability to grow,
migrate and hack into the brain blood supply appears to rely on a pattern of gene activity similar to that now identified in these neural stem cells. he cerebral cortex is so different in humans than in mice,
Kriegstein said. f youe interested in how our brains evolved or in diseases of the cerebral cortex, this is a really exciting discovery.
The study represents the first salvo of a larger BRAIN INITIATIVE-funded project in Kriegstein lab to understand the thousands of different cell types that occupy the developing human brain t the moment
we simply don have a good understanding of the brain arts list? Kriegstein said, ut studies like this are beginning to give us a real blueprint of how our brains are built.
Major funding for the research was provided by the National institutes of health, the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute,
and the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation e
#Gene Test Finds Which Breast cancer Patients Can Skip Chemo Many women with early-stage breast cancer can skip chemotherapy without hurting their odds of beating the disease-good news from a major study that shows
the value of a gene-activity test to gauge each patient's risk. The test accurately identified a group of women
whose cancers are so likely to respond to hormone-blocking drugs that adding chemo would do little
and to be involved in brain formation, but has now been identified as a key part of photoreceptor proteins the structures that allow organisms to sense
#An Accessible Approach to Making a Mini-brain If you need a working miniature brain say for drug testing, to test neural tissue transplants,
The little balls of brain aren performing any cogitation, but they produce electrical signals and form their own neural connections synapses making them readily producible testbeds for neuroscience research,
the authors said. e think of this as a way to have a better in vitro lab model that can maybe reduce animal use,
Just a small sample of living tissue from a single rodent can make thousands of mini-brains,
The mini-brains, about a third of a millimeter in diameter, are not the first or the most sophisticated working cell cultures of a central nervous system
and the mini-brains are simple to make, said co-lead author Yu-Ting Dingle,
The spheres of brain tissue begin to form within a day after the cultures are seeded and have formed complex 3-D neural networks within two to three weeks,
the paper shows. 25-cent mini-brains There are fixed costs, of course, but an approximate cost for each new mini-brain is on the order of $0. 25,
said study senior author Diane Hoffman-Kim, associate professor of molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology and associate professor of engineering at Brown. e knew it was a relatively high-throughput system,
but even we were surprised at the low cost per mini-brain when we computed it, Hoffman-Kim said.
and Eric Darling are all co-authors to build the mini-brains. She wanted to develop a testbed for her lab basic biomedical research.
Boutin was interested in building working 3-D cell cultures to study how adult neural stem cells develop.
The method they developed yields mini-brains with several important properties: -Diverse cell types: The cultures contain both inhibitory and excitatory neurons and several varieties of essential neural support cells called glia.
-Electrically active: the neurons fire and spike and form synaptic connections, producing complex networks. -3-D:
Cells connect and communicate within a realistic geometry, rather than merely across a flat plane as in a 2-D culture.
Experiments showed that the mini-brains have a density of a few hundred thousand cells per cubic millimeter,
which is similar to a natural rodent brain. -Physical structure: Cells in the mini-brain produce their own extracellular matrix,
producing a tissue with the same mechanical properties (squishiness) as natural tissue. The cultures also don rely on foreign materials such as scaffolds of collagen.
Hoffman-Kim, who is affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain science and the Center for Biomedical engineering, said she hopes the mini-brains might proliferate to many different labs,
including those of researchers who have questions about neural tissue but not necessarily the degree of neuroscience and cell culture equipment required of other methods. f you are that person in that lab,
we think you shouldn have to equip yourself with a microelectronics facility, and you shouldn have to do embryonic dissections
in order to generate an in vitro model of the brain, Hoffman-Kim said. The National Science Foundation, the National institutes of health, the Brown Institute for Brain science,
and the U s. Department of education funded the research
#Identifying Cancer's Food Sensors May Help Halt Tumor Growth Oxford university researchers have identified a protein used by tumors to help them detect food supplies.
Initial studies show that targeting the protein could restrict cancerous cells'ability to grow. A team from Oxford university's Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics led by Dr. Deborah Goberdhan worked with cancer doctor and researcher, Professor Adrian Harris,
#Scientists Grow Old Brain cells from Patientsskin Cells Researchers from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have found a way to create aged brain cells from patientsskin samples for the first time.
from older people are converted directly into induced neurons. his lets us keep age-related signatures in the cells
so that we can more easily study the effects of aging on the brain, said study author Rusty Gage, a professor in the Salk Institute Laboratory of Genetics.
which could then be turned into any cell in the body, such as brain cells, for further study.
This made it difficult to study the aging of the human brain because researchers couldn create aged brain cells. s researchers starting using these cells more,
it became clear that during the process of reprogramming to create stem cells the cell was rejuvenated also in other ways,
and showed that it possible to directly convert skin cells to neurons, completely bypassing the stem cell precursor state.
To show this the scientists used both methods to create brain cells from skin cells of 19 people, aged from birth to 89.
In the first technique they prompted the cells to turn into brain cells using the induced pluripotent stem cell approach,
After, they compared the patterns of gene expression in the resulting neurons with cells taken from autopsied brains.
Patterns in the neurons resulting from the induced pluripotent stem cell technique were indistinguishable between young and old samples.
depending on the age of the person they were created from. he neurons we derived showed differences depending on donor age,
said Mertens. nd they actually show changes in gene expression that have been implicated previously in brain aging.
were lower in neurons derived from older patients. Researchers expect the new method will let scientists create aged heart and liver cells as well,
but as of now the work only tested the effectiveness in creating brain cells i
#RNA Editing Technique Treats Severe Form of Muscular dystrophy An RNA editing technique called xon skippinghas shown preliminary success in treating a rare and severe form of muscular dystrophy that currently has no treatment
signals brain tissue to form new connections to compensate for the damage and initiate repairs to the brain.
The finding could eventually lead to a new treatment to promote brain repair and functional recovery in people who have suffered a stroke,
or GDF10, a molecule that previously had known no role in the adult brain, said Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael,
and programs in the UCLA department of neurology. he brain has limited a capacity for recovery after stroke,
then it might be possible to enhance brain repair after stroke. The study, which appears Oct 26 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Neuroscience,
also showed that GDF10 is released after a stroke in humans and in many different animals.
which molecules become more prevalent in the brain during the recovery period after a stroke,
researchers believed that one of the molecules on the list could be a signal telling the brain to repair itself after a stroke,
and they screened for the molecules that saw the biggest increase in the brain after stroke.
After finding that GDF10 was a possible signal for brain repair, the team analyzed the molecule in a petri dish.
The scientists found that GDF10 promotes brain cellsability to form new connections and they identified the signaling systems that control the process. e found that GDF10 induces new connections to form in the brain after stroke,
and that this mediates the recovery of the ability to control bodily movement, Carmichael said.
or off by GDF10 in brain cells after a stroke and compared the cellsrna to RNA in comparable cells during brain development and normal learning,
and to RNA in the brain cells of people with other diseases. They found that GDF10 regulates a unique collection of molecules that improves recovery after stroke.
The discovery indicates that brain tissue regenerating after a stroke is a unique process rather than just a reactivation of the molecules that are active in brain development.
and then mapped the connections in the brain that are tied to body movement. They compared those to the connections in animals who had experienced a stroke
in animals with healthy brains and with animals that had experienced a stroke and had reduced a level of GDF10. he results indicated that GDF10 normally is responsible for the very limited process of the formation of new connections after stroke,
and does so mostly in a specific brain circuit. The formation of connections in this circuit with GDF10 administration significantly enhanced recovery of limb control after stroke.
#Neuropsychology: Power Naps Produce A Significant Improvement In Memory Performance, Study Neuropsychology: Power Naps Produce A Significant Improvement In Memory Performance Generations of school students have gone to bed the night before a maths exam
or a vocabulary test with their algebra book or vocabulary notes tucked under their pillow in the hope that the knowledge would somehow be transferred magically into their brains
while they slept. That they were taken not completely in by a superstitious belief has now been demonstrated by a team of neuropsychologists at Saarland University,
who have shown that even a brief sleep can significantly improve retention of learned material in memory.
a graduate biologist specializing in neuropsychology, working with her Phd supervisor Axel Mecklinger and co-researcher Emma Bridger, is examining how power naps influence memory performance.
The researchers were focused particularly on the role of the hippocampus-a region of the brain in
'We examined a particular type of brain activity, known as"sleep spindles, "that plays an important role in memory consolidation during sleep,'explains Sara Studte.
is consolidated preferentially during this type of brain activity, 'says Mecklinger. Newly learned information is given effectively a label,
They therefore need to access the specific memory of the corresponding episode in the hippocampus.'
'The results have been published in'Neurobiology of Learning and Memory'.'The publication can be accessed via: http://www. sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S1074742715000362hey, check out all the research scientist jobs.
Meningitis causes severe neck pain after a bacterial infection of the lining surrounding the brain
and spinal cord begins affecting the immune system. Because it primarily affects children and teenagers and can often be incurable once it advances,
69 percent in the central nervous system (CNS) in people with advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer---Genentech plans to submit these Phase I/II data to the FDA as part of a New
whose cancer had spread to the central nervous system (CNS)( CNS ORR: 57.1 percent and 68.8 percent, respectively.
whose advanced ALK-positive lung cancer progressed on crizotinib. ancer spreads to the brain in about half of people with ALK-positive lung cancer,
whose disease had spread to the brain or other parts of the CNS. In addition, the people whose tumors shrank in response to alectinib continued to respond for a median of 11.2 months (DOR
whose disease had spread to the brain or other parts of the CNS. In addition the people whose tumors shrank in response to alectinib continued to respond for a median of 7. 5 months (DOR, immature data.
#Paralyzed Men Move Legs With New Noninvasive Spinal cord Stimulation, University of California, Los angeles (UCLA) Study In a study conducted at UCLA,
noninvasive procedure that stimulates the spinal cord. It is believed to be the first time voluntary leg movements have ever been relearned in completely paralyzed patients without surgery.
The results are reported in the Journal of Neurotrauma. hese findings tell us we have to look at spinal cord injury in a new way
said V. Reggie Edgerton, senior author of the research and a UCLA distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology, neurobiology and neurosurgery.
he now believes that it is possible to significantly improve quality of life for patients with severe spinal cord injuries,
ankles and toes following epidural electrical stimulation of their spinal cords. But that procedure required that the stimulator be implanted surgically
who for nearly 40 years has conducted research on how the neural networks in the spinal cord regain control of standing,
including himself, had assumed that people who were paralyzed completely would no longer have had neural connections across the area of the spinal cord injury.
the Walkabout Foundation and the Russian Scientific Fund. hese encouraging results provide continued evidence that spinal cord injury may no longer mean a lifelong sentence of paralysis
including nearly 1. 3 million with spinal cord injuries. person can have hope, based on these results,
a compound that deactivates pain receptors in the brain. nzymes make and break molecules, said Stephanie Galanie, a Phd student in chemistry and a member of Smolke team. heye the action heroes of biology.
in order to craft a molecule that emerged ready to plug pain receptors in the brain. Engineered with a purpose In their Science paper,
#Computer system Being developed to Predict Change In The Alzheimer's Brain, MIT Study MIT researchers are developing a computer system that uses genetic, demographic,
and clinical data to help predict the effects of disease on brain anatomy. In experiments, they trained a machine-learning system on MRI data from patients with neurodegenerative diseases
In the cases of patients with drastic changes in brain anatomy, the additional data cut the predictionserror rate in half,
The researchersfirst step is to produce a generic brain template by averaging the voxel values of hundreds of randomly selected MRI scans.
The brains of healthy subjects and subjects in the early stages of neurodegenerative disease change little over time,
But they instead used it to predict what the brains of Alzheimer patients would have looked like had they not been disfigured by disease.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011