Researchers are edging closer to a therapy for Angelman syndrome that involves injecting molecules that can edit genes into the fetal brain. They have already succeeded in mice and say the approach could eventually treat people with the syndrome.
The work is of high interest because a similar strategy could also work for other genetic conditions linked to autism.
But the prospect of injecting molecules into fetal brains poses ethical questions, experts caution.
Worldwide, 50 million people are living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, every 65 seconds someone in the United States develops this disease, which causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior.
It has been more than 100 years since Alois Alzheimer, M.D., a German psychiatrist and neuropathologist, first reported the presence of senile plaques in an Alzheimer’s disease patient brain. It led to the discovery of amyloid precursor protein that produces deposits or plaques of amyloid fragments in the brain, the suspected culprit of Alzheimer’s disease. Since then, amyloid precursor protein has been extensively studied because of its association with Alzheimer’s disease. However, amyloid precursor protein distribution within and on neurons and its function in these cells remain unclear.
A team of neuroscientists led by Florida Atlantic University’s Brain Institute sought to answer a fundamental question in their quest to combat Alzheimer’s disease—” Is amyloid precursor protein the mastermind behind Alzheimer’s disease or is it just an accomplice?”
A woman has regained full consciousness after 28 years in a vegetative state. Munira Abdulla suffered a severe brain injury a car crash in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 1991 – when she was 32. “I never gave up on her because I always had a feeling that one day she will wake up,” her son Omar Webair.
In multiple sclerosis, the body’s immune system attacks and damages myelin, which is the insulating layer on nerves in the spinal cord, brain and optic nerve. This causes the nerves to short-circuit and cease functioning properly. In “a potential game-changer,” scientists have now demonstrated that a synthetic molecule can restore compromised myelin.
Ecstadelic Media Group releases a new non-fiction book The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology by Alex M. Vikoulov as a Kindle ebook (Press Release, San Francisco, CA, USA, April 22, 2019 01.00 PM PST)
The Science and Philosophy of Information book series is adapted for general audience and based on the previously published grand volume titled “ The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution” by digital philosopher Alex Vikoulov on the ultimate nature of reality, consciousness, the physics of time, and philosophy of mind. In this book one of the series, the author addresses some of the most flaming questions in science and philosophy: Where do we come from? What are the origins of us? What is our role in the grand scheme of things?
“# 1 Hot New Release” in Amazon charts in Cosmology and Evolution, the book starts with a story that happened almost exactly 400 years ago that has had a tremendous “butterfly” effect on us modern humans.
Arab American University congrats and is proud of Dr. Thabat Al-Khatib and researcher in Applied Neuroscience, Dr. Al-Khatib graduated from the Faculty of Sciences and Arts at Arab American University in 2012. She succeeded to add her name on the list of innovators in Britain after the invention of a drug treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and received two patents.
Al Khatib is currently working at the University of Aberdeen – Faculty of Medicine as a researcher in Neuroscience dept. and aspires to be a lecturer in Palestine to add value to students and the community.
Al-Khatib said commenting on the two inventions:
A medical miracle happened about 170 years ago when scientists discovered general anesthesia that enables millions of patients to undergo invasive, life-saving surgeries without pain. However, in spite of decades of research, scientists cannot understand why general anesthesia works.
In a new study published online in Neuron, scientists believe they have discovered the part of the answer. A team of researchers from a Duke University found that several different general anesthesia drugs knock out the patient by hijacking the neural circuitry that the person falls asleep.
They traced this neural circuitry to a tiny cluster of cells at the base of the brain responsible for churning out hormones to regulate bodily functions, moods, and sleep. The discovery is one of the first to indicate a role for the hormones in maintaining the state of general anesthesia and provides valuable insights for generating newer drugs that could put people to sleep with fewer side effects.