A caspase protease in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) may have a hand in cell death in Alzheimer's, according to a report in the January 6 issue of Nature. The caspases appear to play critical roles in various apoptotic mechanisms...
The essential "prion-determining" portion of a prion protein can be removed and fused to a wholly separate protein, creating a new prion with the essential prion qualities of state changing and heritability...
Some of the earliest cellular changes of the trinucleotide repeat disorder spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1) appear only one day after the mutant gene that causes the disorder begins to be expressed...
As with many neurodegenerative diseases, viruses have waxed and waned in popularity as possible causative agents in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, known as Lou Gehrig's disease in the U.S.)...
The green light has been given for Mark Tuszynski and his colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, the Salk Institute, and UC Davis to start a Phase I (safety) trial of nerve growth factor (NGF) gene therapy for early onset Alzheimer's...
A paper in today's Science offers a candidate pathway for inflammatory processes in Alzheimer's disease; the pathway uses the CD40 receptor on microglia and is upregulated by Aβ...
Today's issue of Science brings evidence that CREB (cAMP response element binding protein) is an essential element in the cell survival pathway of nerve growth factor (NGF)...
A report in today's Nature shows that prion forms found in apparently anomalous prion diseases are likely to represent the common final path to neurodegeneration in all the spongiform encephalopathies...
A newcomer has joined the ranks of suspects implicated in early Alzheimer's disease. In tomorrow's Nature, Li-Huei Tsai of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues report that the protein p25 deregulates the kinase cdk5...
A study in this month's Neurology suggests that depression symptoms seen in early Alzheimer's are related to AD pathology, rather than being a response to memory loss and other Alzheimer's symptoms...
In the political arena, there is almost daily rhetoric about the use of fetal and embryonic tissue in research. Meanwhile, in the laboratory, researchers continue to produce results certain to...
The October report in Science by Vassar and colleagues idetifying β-secretase has now been followed up by three more reports this month identifying the BACE enzyme...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: β-Secretase Further Confirmed Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Another APP Secretase? Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Imaging Amyloid Plaques in the Living Mouse Soc for Neuroscience Ann Mtg: One γ