Posted in biotech/medical, health
Medicine is a unique and intensive four-day experience that gathers world-class faculty, innovators and organizations from across the biomedical and technology spectrum to explore and leverage the convergence of fast moving technologies in the reinvention of health and medicine.
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From talks given in a custom-designed theater with multiple configurations for listening and idea generation, to our hands-on technology lab, beachside morning yoga, dinners, and bonfires—Exponential Medicine is a high energy, bold redesign of a medical conference.
A genome-wide study led by Dean Pierre Magistretti sheds light on the mechanisms through which lactate regulates long-term memory formation and neuroprotection.
The breakdown of sugar in non-neuronal brain cells, called astrocytes, produces lactate, which gets shuttled to neurons as a source of energy. This lactate not only supports the energy demands of neurons, but also rapidly and transiently activates multiple genes that modulate neuronal activity and regulate brain function.
Previous studies have shown that lactate stimulates the expression of genes encoding proteins involved in neuronal activity by signaling through N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. Magistretti’s latest study reveals the extent to which lactate modifies gene expression in cortical neurons and also points to the mechanisms through which lactate modulates brain function.
Facebook is aggressively being used by anti-vaccination advocates to target pregnant women with sponsored advertisements to spread false information and conspiracy theories as the US battles a climbing measles outbreak.
A sponsored ad found by Quartz journalist Jeremy Merrill shows the anti-vaccination organisation Stop Mandatory Vaccination targeting women ages 20 to 60 who have expressed interest in pregnancy living in the state of Washington – where the governor recently declared a state of emergency over the measles outbreak.
Nearly 50 children and young adults in Clark County, Washington have become sickened by the disease since January.
These molecules not only rapidly improve symptoms, but remarkably, also appear to renew the underlying brain impairments causing memory loss in preclinical models.
“Currently there are no medications to treat cognitive symptoms such as memory loss that occur in depression, other mental illnesses and aging,” says Dr. Etienne Sibille, Deputy Director of the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH and lead scientist on the study.
What’s unique and promising about these findings, in the face of many failures in drug development for mental illness, is that the compounds are highly targeted to activate the impaired brain receptors that are causing memory loss, he says.
