A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute, in California, sheds light on how a major movement center of the brain called the striatum might work. The striatum is involved in several nervous system diseases including Huntington’s disease where neurons in the region progressively degenerate, leading to severe motor and cognitive problems and…
Despite efforts to develop therapies to treat Huntington’s disease (HD), so far no treatment has been shown to effectively stop, slow, or reverse disease progression. Now, an animal study suggests that treating mice with the experimental drug laquinimod can improve some neuropathologic and behavioral features of Huntington’s. The study, titled “Laquinimod…
Vaccinex Inc. a clinical-stage biotechnology company recently announced that their drug candidate, VX15 developed for the treatment of Huntington’s disease (HD) received orphan drug designation (ODD) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
A new study from researchers in Spain may increase understanding of a less recognized aspect of Huntington’s disease (HD): cognitive problems. The article examines the possible causes of cognitive difficulties in HD and how they might be addressed through new therapies. The report, “Cognitive Dysfunction in Huntington’s Disease: Mechanisms and…
In a recent study, the modification of a specific component of the huntingtin protein reduced neurodegenerative symptoms in an animal model’s brain and offered hope for future therapies that could effectively treat Huntington’s disease in humans. The study, “Serine 421 regulates mutant huntingtin toxicity and clearance in mice,” was published in the…
Researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York have discovered that a protein complex crucial for normal brain development might also be necessary in the adult brain — silencing genes that drive neurodegeneration in Huntington’s disease. The study, “Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) silences…
Scientists at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital were able — for the first time — to track epigenetic factors, or non-genetic influences on gene activity, linked to Huntington’s disease in the brains of living humans. The study, “Insights into neuroepigenetics through human histone…
About 300 international scientists and industry leaders recently gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the Hereditary Disease Foundation‘s 10th biennial “Milton Wexler Celebration of Life” Symposium, to promote collaborations that can take scientific findings from the laboratory into the lives of patients as treatments. One of the highlights of the meeting,…
In recent years, Huntington’s disease has joined the group of neurodegenerative diseases characterized by aggregation of the tau protein in fibrillary tangles inside neurons. An invention by Prana Biotechnology might give new insights into the disease processes and allow for new drug candidates to be screened for activity against the…
The accumulation of toxic protein aggregates within nerve cells are a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, or Huntington’s disease. Now, researchers at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have identified a protein called UBQLN2 that protects against such diseases by eliminating those protein aggregates. The study, “…
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