Edward Koo on A broader horizon of Alzheimer pathogenesis: ALZAS--an early serum biomarker?

COMMENT I look forward to replication of this finding. 0 edkoo

Edward Koo on Conversion from preclinical to dinical stage of Alzheimer's disease as shown by decline of cognitive function in carriers of the Swedish APP-mutation.

COMMENT This comparison reinforces the idea that MCI is really a hetergenous group of individuals. 0 edkoo

Edward Koo on The neurodegeneration mutant löchrig interferes with cholesterol homeostasis and Appl processing.

COMMENT No obvious direct link between AMPK and APPL (or APP). But it may be indirect, through membrane lipids. So, this is an in vivo model of dosing animals or cells with statins. 0 edkoo

Edward Koo on Vitamin E and C supplements and risk of dementia.

COMMENT Hard to know whether the negative association is a true negative. One might have thought there may be a slight beneficial effect with vitamin E. 0 edkoo

Edward Koo on Cyclooxygenase-2 promotes amyloid plaque deposition in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease neuropathology.

COMMENT Somewhat surprising results, perhaps. But show how complicated the COX/abeta relationship in brain can be. 0 edkoo

Edward Koo on Apolipoprotein E4 influences amyloid deposition but not cell loss after traumatic brain injury in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.

COMMENT Another thorough analysis of the PDAPP mice from the Holtzman lab. If one believes the human data and inferences, then these results are predictable. But it is satisfying that the animal results are consistent with the human data. 0 edkoo

Alexei Koudinov on Alzheimer's disease: molecular understanding predicts amyloid-based therapeutics.

COMMENT However, in order not to miss the point not covered in the article by Selkoe and Schenk please see the British Medical Journal contribution entitled "Amyloid was never clearly implicated in Alzheimer's disease, so look at Aβ from a different ang

Christopher Eckman on Aβ Elevated in Endothelin Converting Enzyme Knockouts

COMMENT [Re: Whether there is any data correlating ECE levels and age in humans] The simple answer is that it hasn't yet been examined. The regulation of ECE expression is complex, as evidenced by the production of multiple isoforms of both ECE-1 and ECE-2 t

Alexei Koudinov on Deciphering the genesis and fate of amyloid beta-protein yields novel therapies for Alzheimer disease.

COMMENT Please do not miss the follow up discussion (for the JCI paper by Selkoe) at the British Medical Journal: "Amyloid was never clearly implicated in Alzheimer's disease, so look at Aβ from a different angle" [FullText]. 0 postmaster

Stephen D. Ginsberg on Memory-specific temporal profiles of gene expression in the hippocampus.

COMMENT A compelling report by Cavallaro et al. demonstrates expression level changes within the hippocampus of rats using a conventional spatial learning task combined with Affymetrix U34 rat neurobiology gene chips. This group has a distinguished track record i

Tennore Ramesh on ALS—Could Stability Rather than Activity of SOD Hold the Key?

COMMENT First of all I must admit that I am not an expert on the dynamics of SOD protein folding. In this paper, Lindberg et al. provide data that suggests the involvement of Apo-SOD in ALS disease pathogenesis. It has been known for a long time that the developm

John Hardy on BSE prions propagate as either variant CJD-like or sporadic CJD-like prion strains in transgenic mice expressing human prion protein.

COMMENT This is a very surprising finding which may suggest that the incidence of BSE-caused CJD is about twice what was thought... this is just over 100 people so far. 0 J.Hardy

Xingyong Wu on Join the Quantum Dots—for Brighter, Longer, and Multiplex Cell Images

COMMENT It was demonstrated a few years ago that QDs had the potential to become a new and better class of fluorescent labels with advantages over conventional organic dyes. However, since some key technical problems remained to be solved, these advantages were n

Howard Federoff on Playing Sonic Hedgehog in the Hippocampus

COMMENT The intrinsic signals that regulate the extent of adult neurogenesis are incompletely understood. In neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, neuronal dysfunction and loss underlie cognitive impairment. Understanding and perhaps exploiting

Sanford Simon on Join the Quantum Dots—for Brighter, Longer, and Multiplex Cell Images

COMMENT Biology is at a wonderfully exciting, but vexing point. We have the sequences for all of the human genes. However, the business end of the body occurs [is run by] the products of the genes. Often, to understand how things are functioning, or what happens