Author Archives: Alice Melão

Identifying Huntington’s disease progression can be a challenge in clinical trials. Now, an international team of researchers proposes in an article published in JAMA Neurology the use of a new composite measure to help evaluate disease progression prior to a motor diagnosis. Progression of Huntington’s disease is characterized by the…

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a grant of more than $2.5 million to support the development of HDWear, a telecare technology that uses wearable sensors to remotely monitor motor function in Huntington’s disease (HD) patients.

AC Immune has identified antibodies that target the alpha-synuclein and TDP-43 proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s. The discovery could be used to develop treatments for such diseases, the company said. Antibodies are immune system cells that can recognize and generate a response to invaders. “Many neurodegenerative diseases share…

Aggregates of mutant huntingtin protein have been associated with cellular toxicity in Huntington’s disease. Now researchers have discovered that isolated forms of mutated huntingtin are actually responsible for major molecular changes in cells that will drive toxicity. The study, “Transcriptional profiles for distinct aggregation states of mutant Huntingtin exon…

A sluggish metabolism in the cells of the striatum, a brain region essential for motor function control, is associated with disease severity in Huntington’s patients, while a higher metabolism in other brain regions seems to be associated with more severe motor symptoms in patients, according to researchers. These findings…

A mutated form of the huntingtin (mHTT) protein has been acknowledged as the cause of Huntington’s disease, but researchers have not been fully clear about how it disrupts the function of brain cells. A study, “Mutant Huntingtin Disrupts the Nuclear Pore Complex,” that was published in the scientific journal…

Researchers at the University of California and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified the mechanisms that make the brain’s immune cells different from all other immune cells A finding with implications for Huntington’s disease was that genes associated with neurological illnesses have higher lessons of expression in microglia,…

Abnormal proteins found in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s seem to rely on the same mechanism to spread within the brain and disrupt its normal functions, according to a study published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica. The cellular process described in the study, “Endocytic vesicle rupture…

Researchers at the Sussex Drug Discovery Centre in Brighton, England, have received a £3 million grant from Britain’s non-profit Wellcome Trust to develop Huntington’s disease treatments. The team will team up with other researchers to target a protein that plays a role in cognitive impairment, one of the hallmarks of the neurological…

Researchers have discovered why Huntington’s disease (HD) patients have defects in the blood-brain barrier that contribute to the symptoms of this neurological disorder. Their study, “Huntington’s Disease iPSC-Derived Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells Reveal WNT-Mediated Angiogenic and Blood-Brain Barrier Deficits,” was published in Cell Reports. “Now we know there are…