Penn Medicine News Blog Archive: Neurodegenerative Diseases

Art has been shown to have a calming and healing effect, which makes it a vital presence in a hospital environment. This is especially true in an intensive care unit which can be a frightening experience for both patients and visitors, with all its unfamiliar equipment and sounds. When the...

A diverse team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is in New Orleans at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting, sharing the latest data aimed at enhancing the speed of diagnosis and treatment, and ultimately helping people with neurologic conditions.

The Philadelphia Science Festival Carnival tents have all been folded and hauled away. There have already been four nights of non-stop science cafes at local watering holes. But, there are still six more days of the festival to go, and Penn Medicine faculty will be participating at events on most of those days.

In a layer cake of research labs nestled on separate floors in a remote corner of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, a new use for an existing drug was uncovered. The drug, epothilone D (EpoD), stalled after original tests as a cancer treatment, but Perelman School of Medicine...

In a recent Journal of Cell Biology study Erika Holzbaur, PhD, a professor of Physiology, postdoctoral researcher Sandra Maday, Ph.D., and Karen E. Wallace, all from the Perelman School of Medicine, examined autophagosomes in neurons from transgenic mice reared with florescent green biomarker. These neurons, when grown in culture, send out axon-like projections, which grew 1 mm in two days, making it easier for the team to record movies of the sacs moving along the projection. The team saw the sacs form and engulf cargo at the end of the projections farthest from the nucleus, and mature into the degradative autolysosomes as they moved toward the cell body. The autolysosomes also become increasingly acidic as they move along the axon, most likely to aid in more efficient degradation.

Sleep keeps neuroscientist Marcos Frank awake, studying the importance of slumber during early life. Building on his research showing that the brain during sleep is fundamentally different from the brain during wakefulness, Frank an associate professor of Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that cellular changes in the sleeping brain may promote the formation of memories. In the newest study from the lab, published in the March 1 issue of Current Biology, the team found that sleep is associated with increased brain protein synthesis and transcription of messenger RNAs.

With this year’s Super Bowl setting a record for being the most-viewed show in U.S. television history, concussions – more technically, mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) – have probably been on many a mind this week. TBI has long been a leading cause of death and disability, with over 1.7 million cases in the US alone each year.

Research from the Department of Psychiatry could have ended up as four or five different interesting papers with moderate impact in the field. Instead, we were able to tell a complete story by linking potential genetic risk factors of schizophrenia to a functional disruption in how the brain responds to sound. We then linked those processes together by identifying reduced activity in special nerve cells that are designed to make other cells in the brain work together at a very fast pace.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides exquisite structural detail of the brain, for example, to detect tumors or relative size of regions. However, current MRI methods are not capable of imaging the distribution of neurotransmitters – the brain’s chemical messengers -- across the whole brain. A new Nature Medicine paper out this week from Perelman School of Medicine researchers led by Ravinder Reddy, PhD, professor of Radiology, describes a first-of-its-kind MRI technique (GluCEST) to measure glutamate concentration and local changes across the whole brain. The technique is based on chemical exchange effects of protons in water.

Every saga needs occasional updates. TDP-43 -- a protein important in gene expression that can undergo pathologic misfolding -- is no different. Earlier reports on the protein were outlined in a Penn Med news blog, which describes its pathology and genetics related to neurodegenerative disease. But now the field is maturing and researchers are linking TDP-43 to a well-established clinical area - the role of oxidative stress in the demise of nerve cells.