The Georgia Institute of Technology has received a EUREKA grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to design a new way to treat invasive brain tumors by capturing the migrating cells that spread the disease. The research team plans to develop a system that will excavate brain tumor cells by directing them away from their location in the interior of the brain to a more external location where they can be removed or killed.

Read the full story here

Researchers from the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich have shown that the ADAM10 protein can inhibit the formation of beta-amyloid, which is responsible for Alzheimer’s disease. ADAM10 acts like a pair of molecular scissors to cut the protein from which beta-amyloid is formed, effectively preventing the formation of beta-amyloid. This makes ADAM10 a key molecule in Alzheimer’s therapy.

Read the full story here

An article published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry presents a novel pharmacological target that, in combination with a neurotrophic factor, could be used to improve the survival of striatal neurons, the principal nerve cells affected by the neurodegeneration observed in Huntington’s disease. The study was conducted by the researchers at the University of Barcelona. Huntington’s chorea is a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by a genetic mutation of the gene encoding for the protein Huntingtin.

Read the full story here

The research team, led by Dr. Richard Ambron, Professor of Pathology & Cell Biology at Columbia University Medical Center, has started developing N60 after his colleague, Dr. Ying-Ju Sung, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology, discovered the pathway that neurons use to inform the brain of an injury. Left uncontrolled, this pathway, called PKG, persistently alters the electrical properties of the neuron, ultimately causing chronic pain. Laboratory tests have shown that N60 is a powerful and very selective PKG blocker.

Read the full story here.

CNS Response today announced that physicians using Referenced-EEG (rEEG(R)) had “success” rates reaching 65 percent for patients with treatment-resistant depression. Referenced-EEG showed “significant improvement” in informing pharmacotherapy for treatment-resistant patients in a 12-week study, according to the Journal of Psychiatric Research article.

Researchers at a Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) have developed a novel approach to efficiently identify disease relevant genes in human complex neurological disorders and demonstrated the effectiveness of this method by applying it to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, according to a new study reported online in the journal, Human Molecular Genetics. The approach developed by the scientists uses cutting-edge techniques to study human tissue and animal models.

Read the full story here

A group of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, and Princeton University (USA) have now put forward a new explanation regarding growth of brain. Using a combination of experiments, mathematical models and computer simulations they showed that neuronal connections in the visual cortex of cats are restructured during the growth phase and that this restructuring can be explained by self-organizational processes.

Read the full story here

Exposure to lead during early childhood and even later in life has long been known to affect the release of these critical neurotransmitters. However, the precise mechanism by which lead ions (Pb2+) impair this process has remained unknown. The study conducted by researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, demonstrates that during the formation of synapses – synaptogenesis – exposure to lead alters the levels of several key proteins involved in neurotransmitter release.

Read the full story here

A research team has sharply expanded scientific knowledge of the composition of human spinal fluid. The researchers have identified 2,630 proteins that reside in fluid that is considered “normal,” a number nearly three times as great as the total number of proteins previously identified. Another striking finding was that more than half (56%) of the proteins were relatively unique to the spinal fluid and not found in blood.

Read the full story here

Pediatricians whose patients undergo “routine” brain MRIs need a plan to deal with findings that commonly reveal unexpected-but-benign anomalies that are unlikely to cause any problem, report investigators at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. The most common reasons for MRI testing in children are seizures and headaches or as a prerequisite for enrolling in certain studies. The investigators emphasize that none of the brain anomalies discovered in the study were related to the patients’ underlying condition.

Read the full story here