Category Archives: Research News (General)

In their latest brain imaging study on women at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, York University researchers have found deterioration in the pathways that serve to communicate signals between different brain regions needed for performing everyday activities such as driving a car or using a computer.

“We observed a relationship between the levels of deterioration in the brain wiring and their performance on our task that required simultaneous thinking and moving; what we see here is a result of communication failure,” explains Professor Lauren Sergio in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science.

In an interview, Sergio in whose lab the study was conducted, says the findings also suggest that their computerized, easily-administered task that the study participants performed, can be used to test those at risk for Alzheimer’s disease to flag early warning signs. “The test is a clinically feasible substitute to the more involved braining imaging tasks that people don’t, or can’t, have done routinely.”

The study, Diffusion Tensor Imaging Correlates of Cognitive-Motor Decline in Normal Aging and Increased Alzheimer’s Disease Risk, recently published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, was conducted on 30 female participants of whom 10 were in their mid-20s. The rest were in their 50s or older, with half of them at high risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

“We decided to focus this study on women, as there is higher prevalence in this group, and also women who carry the ApoE4 gene are more vulnerable to the degradation of white matter,” notes PhD candidate Kara Hawkins who led the study, adding that the genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease was one of the traits tested for in the current study.

“We scanned the brains of the participants, aiming to see if the impaired cognitive-motor performance in the high risk group was related to brain alterations over and above standard aging changes,” Hawkins adds.

According to the researchers, the big question ahead is ‘what can be done to prevent a decline in function of a person’s brain showing signs of communication problems.’ And the answer they are exploring is in finding ways to use these thinking and moving tasks in a proactive way, as part of a game-like cognitive-motor integration training method

Source: News-Medical.net

Translational research for neurodegenerative disease depends intimately upon animal models. Unfortunately, promising therapies developed using mouse models mostly fail in clinical trials, highlighting uncertainty about how well mouse models mimic human neurodegenerative disease at the molecular level.

This study compared the transcriptional signature of neurodegeneration in mouse models of Alzheimer׳s disease (AD), Parkinson׳s disease (PD), Huntington׳s disease (HD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to human disease.

In contrast to aging, which demonstrated a conserved transcriptome between humans and mice, only 3 of 19 animal models showed significant enrichment for gene sets comprising the most dysregulated up- and down-regulated human genes. Spearman׳s correlation analysis revealed even healthy human aging to be more closely related to human neurodegeneration than any mouse model of AD, PD, ALS or HD.

Remarkably, mouse models frequently upregulated stress response genes that were consistently downregulated in human diseases. Among potential alternate models of neurodegeneration, mouse prion disease outperformed all other disease-specific models.

Even among the best available animal models, conserved differences between mouse and human transcriptomes were found across multiple animal model versus human disease comparisons, surprisingly, even including aging. Relative to mouse models, mouse disease signatures demonstrated consistent trends toward preserved mitochondrial function protein catabolism, DNA repair responses, and chromatin maintenance. These findings suggest a more complex and multifactorial pathophysiology in human neurodegeneration than is captured through standard animal models, and suggest that even among conserved physiological processes such as aging, mice are less prone to exhibit neurodegeneration-like changes.

This work may help explain the poor track record of mouse-based translational therapies for neurodegeneration and provides a path forward to critically evaluate and improve animal models of human disease.

The Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for A Healthy Life” has launched a joint transnational call for research proposals in the area of Nutrition and Cognitive Function.

The joint action “Nutrition and Cognitive Function” (NutriCog) aims at promoting research activities that address the interrelation of diet and cognitive function. This knowledge will lay the basis for dietary preventive strategies and recommendations to guide individuals and populations towards health promoting dietary habits.

The objective of the NutriCog Call is to support ambitious, innovative and transnational collaborative research projects that will address important questions relating to the interplay between nutrition and cognitive function. Both the influence of dietary patterns (and/or dietary constituents, where appropriate) on cognitive functions and vice versa the effects of Central Nervous System nutrient signaling and cognitive processes on food intake, dietary patterns and eating behaviour are relevant for this call.

Proposals have to follow a multidisciplinary approach and should cover multiple areas, such as mechanistic/experimental research, translational research, epidemiological research and pilot/proof of principle studies for interventions.

Source: JPI-HDHL

Five months into his five-year term as research commissioner, Carlos Moedas spoke to Nature Magazine about his hopes and ambitions for the scientific programmes run by the European Union (EU), particularly the huge seven-year €80-billion (US$86-billion) Horizon 2020 (H2020) research programme, which runs until 2020.

Moedas wants scientists to change their mentality for H2020, breaking free of individual silos and including more social science. But he is already facing complaints that money is being stripped from the programme to finance other European initiatives, such as the proposed €16-billion European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI), a Europe-wide bid to stimulate the region’s economy.

An edited version of the interview is available through the link below:

Source: Nature Magazine

The Dementia Discovery Fund, which is being established by the UK government with initial commitments totalling $100 million, brings together leading pharmaceutical companies, the UK government and Alzheimer’s Research UK to address the rising threat posed by dementia by supporting research into future treatments.

The fund aims to identify and nurture promising new avenues of research from around the world in the field of dementia. It is hoped that by providing critical financial support and expert advice during the early stages of research, the development of innovative new treatments for this disease could be accelerated.

The Dementia Discovery Fund will be structured as a typical venture capital fund, but will be the first to focus solely on dementia research. The Fund will comb the global research community for the most promising early stage research to invest in. A scientific advisory board of representatives from each of the partner organisations will provide expert scientific input during the selection of research programmes, as well as providing ongoing advice during pre-clinical and early clinical development. Partners will then be sought for the progression of promising assets through the clinical development pipeline, the intention being that proceeds from licensing or sale of such programmes will be returned to the Fund and its investors. The Fund will appoint a professional investment manager in due course, which will be responsible for its financial governance and investment decisions.

Source: Reuters

On 16 and 17 March 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) hosted its first Ministerial Conference on Global Action Against Dementia. Ministers from around the world, as well as experts from the research, clinical and NGO communities, came together in Geneva for the first time to discuss the global problems posed by dementia.

The aim is to raise awareness of the socio-economic burden created by dementia, and to highlight that this burden can be reduced if the world collectively commits to placing dementia high on the global public health agenda.

The first day of the conference covered issues from research and drug regulation to care and human rights. On the second day, ministers discussed how to collectively move the global dementia agenda forward.

The conference was supported by the Department of Health of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The recorded webcast from the two days of the event is available here and at the link below.

The major outcome of the conference is that WHO member states have agreed to support a formal Call for Action setting out the intent to tackle dementia on an international scale and provide global leadership. The Call for Action was adopted by most of the countries that attended the conference. You can read the Call for Action on the WHO site.

WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan said

“We have been running behind the curve with dementia for a long time, but several recent events tell us that we are catching up. We must weave these multiple new initiatives into a comprehensive plan that can work in all countries. Government commitment will be key.”

A small sensor, headphones and a mobile phone – the elements of a prototype kit that is giving hope of relief for sufferers of Parkinson’s disease.

A European Framework Programme-backed research project being spearheaded in Barcelona does not offer a cure for the degenerative condition, but it could improve the quality of life of patients and give them more autonomy.

The project is aimed at helping patients manage the different stages of their disease more autonomously. People participating in the study wear a sensor on their waist that records movement data and identifies symptoms. When the patient lacks coordination, acoustic stimuli in the ear help them walk in a straight line.

The data is also sent via mobile phone to doctors, who can follow the evolution and adapt treatment accordingly. “The device tells us how many hours the patient’s state is ‘on’ and ‘off’, how the patient walks during these two different stages of the disease,” says Àngels Bayés, a neurologist at the Teknon Medical Centre, leading the research. “We’re also able to know if the patient suffers from blockages or not, and if so how many blockages he suffers throughout the day. We can also know how fast he can walk. “When the system automatically detects that the patient has motor problems, it activates acoustic stimuli to help the patient walk better.”

Encouraging trials
Researchers say first trials have confirmed that the device can indeed help patients increase their autonomy, although Paola Quispe, a Teknon Medical Centre nurse, says patients she has worked with have suggested some minor improvements: “Most of the patients have said they would prefer smaller sensors. There’s also a gap of around one minute between the moment the sensors identify a problem and the sending of the acoustic stimulation. Patients also said they would prefer to have musical rhythms, instead of just the beat of a metronome.”

Now researchers are working on giving the device the capacity to regulate the medication the patients receive, in real-time and in response to their body’s needs, as Joan Cabestany, a telecommunications engineer and coordinator of the REMPARK project, as it is called, explains: “The next step is to transform this device into a fully operational medical aid. A device that will help doctors provide better diagnostics, and also, eventually, allow them to adapt the patients medication, which will improve their health. But medical devices are heavily regulated in Europe, so we need to work further in this direction.”

Source: EuroNews

GAP, initiated by the New York Academy of Sciences and Global CEO Initiative, is moving one step closer to reaching its goal of establishing a global, trial-ready platform for Alzheimer’s disease.

The Global Alzheimer’s Platform (GAP) and the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) announced today that they will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to accelerate Alzheimer’s drug development by building a global, standing, trial-ready platform for Alzheimer’s drug development.

The collaboration represents a significant commitment to work together to recruit patients for clinical trials, to create a high-performing clinical trial system, and to develop a standing adaptive protocol to test new molecules quickly, and move those with promise into later stage development.

Source: New York Academy of Sciences

Adult neurons are touchy things. Too much protein can throw them off course, resulting in neurodegeneration.

After showing how mutant ATAXIN1 (the protein associated with the neurodegenerative disorder spinocerebellar ataxia 1) cannot fold and be discarded properly, resulting in malfunctioning neurons, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have found an RNA-binding protein called PUMILIO1 that regulates ATAXIN1 levels.

Loss of PUMILIO1 activity – as when it is knocked out or lost –increases the amount of normal ATAXIN1 in the cell and, in studies of mice, causes neurodegeneration that mimics that of spinocerebellar ataxia 1.

Now, in a report that appears in the journal Cell, researchers demonstrate that an RNA-binding protein called PUMILIO1 also regulates levels of the ATAXIN1 protein. When a mouse lacks one copy of the PUMILIO1 gene, the amount of ATAXIN1 increases, starting early in development. The mouse that loses the copy or copies of PUMILIO1 develops symptoms reminiscent of spinocerebellar ataxia 1, loss of motor coordination and degeneration of Purkinje neurons in the cerebellum. Eliminating the copy of the PUMILIO1 gene in mice that already lack a copy of ATAXIN1 reduces the abnormal symptoms and rescues the animals from the disease.

The findings with PUMILIO1 demonstrate that neurons require just the right amount of the important protein – not too much and not too little.

“It shows that cells in the brain are not tolerant of too much of a normal protein,” said corresponding author Huda Zoghbi. “If we can come back and slightly decrease those proteins early in life before the system falters, we may have an effect.. For the late onset spinocerebellar ataxia 1, if we could come up with a strategy to find molecules to decrease the mutant ATAXIN1 – no more than 10 to 20 percent – we might be able to relieve the disease,” said Zoghbi.

“This could be important in the study of other neurodegenerative diseases. We don’t know what proteins are involved and what happens in diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and similar disorders,” said lead author Vincenzo Gennarino. “For these and other neurodegenerative conditions that do not fit Mendelian categories, it may prove most fruitful to find factors that elevate the levels of the key disease-driving proteins.”

Source: Baylor College of Medicine

The current policy approach to tackling dementia is socially and economically unsustainable, according to a new OECD report.

Countries need to take action now to improve the lives of people living with dementia and their carers, prioritise public research on dementia, and improve the incentives for private investment in dementia innovation.

Addressing Dementia: The OECD Response says that the human and financial costs of this incurable disease are huge. Nearly 50 million people are living with dementia worldwide, costing societies over half a trillion US dollars each year, roughly equal to the GDP of Switzerland.

Source: OECD