The pathophysiology of the brains of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients is widely studied. So too are global expression changes revealed by bulk transcriptomic analyses. Now, for the first time, researchers have performed a comprehensive analysis of genes expressed in individual brain cells of patients with AD using single-nucleus RNA-seq (snRNA-seq) profiles, identifying distinctive cellular…

Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders have stumped the medical community for decades, but now with advanced computational methods researchers are uncovering molecular mechanisms behind these devastating diseases.  In a study published in bioRxiv on March 17, scientists at Scripps Research Institute reveal how disease-associated mutations disrupt pre-mRNA splicing of…

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has recently become a serious societal concern, as the link between repetitive head traumas and neurodegenerative brain disease has come to light. Yet TBI is signficantly under-reported due to lack of adequate diagnostic tools, sparking great debate about this ‘silent epidemic,’ particularly among professional and youth…

The risk of death, like the risk of disease, rises with age. That much is obvious. What is less obvious is that for mortality and disease, the underlying risk dynamics—what might be called the actuarial contours of decline—are closely associated. In fact, the contours are so similar that scientists suspect…

A research team led by scientists at Harvard University said it has found a potential new biomarker and drug target for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study (“ALS-implicated protein TDP-43 sustains levels of STMN2, a mediator of motor neuron growth and repair”) relied on stem cell models of…

While there is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and few drugs have had clinical efficacy in slowing progression, early detection is still a high priority to help manage the disease appropriately. Now, a new study by investigators at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology within the Washington University School…

Researchers at the Salk Institute have described for the first time the molecular structure of CRISPR-Cas13d, an enzyme for emerging RNA-editing technology. They were able to visualize the enzyme with cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) as reported in an article (“Structural Basis for the RNA-Guided Ribonuclease Activity of CRISPR-Cas13d”) in Cell. “CRISPR-Cas endonucleases directed…

A group of philanthropists that includes Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, in conjunction with the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), have announced a $30 million dollar initiative for research to develop novel biomarkers early detection diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias. Dubbed the Diagnostics Accelerator, the investment fund will…

Nightingale Health, the developer of a blood biomarker technology for studying chronic diseases, said today it will analyze the biomarker profiles of 500,000 blood samples from UK Biobank, under a 30-month collaboration the company will fund through a €10 million ($11.6 million) investment in the biorepository. The technology, Nightingale said,…

People with type 2 diabetes and obesity are known to more likely develop neuropsychiatric and mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Work in mice by researchers in the U.S. and Japan now suggests that bacteria in the gut—the microbiome—may contribute to depressive-type behaviors in animals with diet-induced obesity (DIO).…

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and five biopharma partners are betting $50 million-plus that the consortium they have launched to sequence the exomes of all 500,000 contributors of samples to the UK Biobank by the end of 2019 will do more than glean new insights into how human genetic variations shape human biology…

An international team led by neuroscientists at Université de Montréal (UdeM) reports the discovery of a basic molecular mechanism that better helps understand how Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), works. Their finding may eventually lead to new treatments for the debilitating disease, which cripples people by removing the…

A team at Stanford University School of Medicine has used CRISPR/Cas9 technology to gain new insights into the genes that might represent new targets for the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Led by Aaron Gitler, Ph.D., professor of genetics, and Michael Bassik, Ph.D., assistant professor of genetics, the team…

Berg said it plans to develop novel biomarker strategies for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders through a research partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). Under the collaboration, whose value was not disclosed, Mass General and BWH will provide Berg with access to a longitudinal…

A new test, which combines the effects of more than two dozen genetic variants linked to a slight risk of Alzheimer's individually, is a better predictor than APOE E4 of which cognitively normal older adults will eventually develop Alzheimer's dementia, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco…