CONFERENCE COVERAGE SERIES
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2010
San Diego, CA, U.S.A.
13 – 17 November 2010
San Diego: What—3 Percent? Money Woes Trump Science at SfN
Unusually for this conference, the buzz was less about the latest hot research and more about the chilling funding scenario unfolding at the NIA...
San Diego: Tau Oligomer Antibodies Relieve Motor Deficits in Mice
Mirroring a trend in amyloid-β research, work on the tau protein seems to be moving from tangles toward that infamous “O” word—oligomers...
San Diego: TDP-43 Targets Loom Large—But Where’s the Bull’s Eye?
If posters at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting and a recent publication are any indication, the field is poised to discover a wealth of clues to TDP-43 function...
San Diego: Pilin’ on the Pyro, Aβ Going Rogue
What causes Aβ to go rogue in Alzheimer’s disease?...
San Diego: ALS Research Goes to the Dogs
Move over, mice; there are now one, and possibly two, models for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in man’s best friend...
San Diego: A New Tack on Insulin-Based Therapies?
Shoring up insulin responses is a tried-and-true strategy for helping people manage type 2 diabetes (T2D), but could it also prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease?...
San Diego: Aβ Oligomers Seen, With ApoE, at Synapses of Human Brain
Despite decades of research, it is still not clear how apolipoprotein E ties in with AD etiology...
San Diego: Subcortical Blues—Locus Ceruleus in AD, Neurodegeneration
The locus ceruleus has only recently begun to draw wider attention among neurodegeneration scientists...
San Diego: ApoE, Aβ, and AD—Strengthening the Synaptic Connection
At SfN, several presentations and posters focused on links between synapse health and apolipoprotein E (ApoE), a major risk factor for late-onset AD...
San Diego: The Curious Case of ApoE, Cholesterol, and Cognition
Evidence for cholesterol’s role in Alzheimer’s disease has been growing in recent years, and many cardiovascular risk factors have popped up also...
San Diego: Researchers Rejuvenate Neurons to Bridge Spinal Cord Gaps
Spinal cord injury creates a rift that has proven extremely difficult to bridge...
San Diego: Across the Great Divide—Strategies for Spinal Cord Repair
Repairing severed or severely damaged spinal cords is an intractable medical problem, and progress in solving it has been slow...
San Diego: Flexible N-Termini Key to Aβ42 Oligomer Toxicity?
Progress has been slow for researchers toiling to discern the physical makeup of Aβ oligomers, widely seen as the form of amyloid-β most dangerous in AD...
San Diego: Stimulating Autophagy Improves Symptoms in Mice
In Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, misfolded proteins are seen banding together en masse, wreaking havoc in neurons...
San Diego: Tweakers and Tweezers—Grappling with Novel Aβ Therapies
Since the approval of cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine, no new therapy for Alzheimer’s disease has passed the clinical trial litmus test...
San Diego: Progranulin, Wnt, and Frizzled, Frazzle Neurons in FTD
Progranulin mutations cause some forms of frontotemporal dementia, but exactly what the protein does and how it fails in disease are open questions...
San Diego: Mutant SOD1 Bumps Mitochondrial Current Up—Or Down?
Mutations in SOD1, which lead to ALS, cause SOD1 to buddy up with mitochondrial proteins and interfere with normal mitochondrial conductance...
San Diego: Pre-AD Brain Changes May Allow Early Diagnosis
In an ideal future, physicians would diagnose people with incipient Alzheimer’s disease long before memory problems appear...
San Diego: The Future of AD—Can We Vaccinate?
Scientists are developing better ways to predict who will develop Alzheimer’s disease...