UK team gets $1.5 million NIH grant to continue success with cell-level study of Alzheimer's disease factor

University of Kentucky researchers have provided the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer's disease.

A UK news release explains, "The astrocyte is a very abundant non-neuronal cell type that performs absolutely critical functions for maintaining healthy nervous tissue. However, in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s disease, many astrocytes exhibit clear physical changes often referred to as 'astrocyte activation.' The appearance of activated astrocytes at very early stages of Alzheimer's has led to the idea that astrocytes contribute to the emergence and/or maintenance of other pathological markers of the disease."

UK researchers gave mice gene therapy at a very young age and assessed them 10 months later. The astrocyte activation improved brain function and preserved cognitive function. The research, published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience, has led to a five-year, $1.5 million National Institutes of Health funding grant to the researchers and the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging to further this line of study. Chris Norris, an associate professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Molecular and Biomedical Pharmacology, is the senior author of the study. (Read more)
 

UK scientists discover a clue to treating diseases like 'mad cow'

University of Kentucky scientists may be a step closer to finding a way to treat diseases related to prion proteins, including bovine spongiform encephalitis, or mad-cow disease. They've learned that plasminogen, a protein used to bust blood clots in the body, increases the speed at which prion diseases progress.

"Since prion diseases can lay undetected for decades, delaying the ability of the disease-associated prion protein to replicate by targeting the cofactor of the process could be a monumental implication for treatment," said Chongsuk Ryou, right, senior author of the study.

Prion diseases are rare, fatal diseases characterized by oddly-shaped protein molecules in the brain. Besides mad-cow, they include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans; scrapie in sheep; and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, UK's news source UKNow reports. The study was published by the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology in the December issue of The FASEB Journal.

Scientists used test tube reactions to multiply disease-associated proteins, UKNow reports. The reactions were done with and without plasminogen present. "By showing how prions hijack our own clot-busting machinery, this work points to a new target for anti-prion therapy," said Dr. Gerald Weissman, editor-in-chief of the journal. (Read more)