amyloid

A new technique developed in the lab of Matthew Lew at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis measures the orientation of single molecules. It is enabling, for the first time, optical microscopy to reveal nanoscale details about the structures of these problematic proteins.

A team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis and their German collaborators say a compound found in green tea could have lifesaving potential for patients with multiple myeloma and amyloidosis, who face often-fatal medical complications associated with bone-marrow disorders.

Antidepressants can reduce production of the main ingredient of Alzheimer’s brain plaques, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Pennsylvania. The plaques are highlighted in red in this image of a mouse’s brain.

Finding ways to diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease has frustrated scientists and clinicians for decades. But now the battle has reached a potentially significant milestone: the launch of the first clinical trials to test whether giving new drug treatments before dementia can prevent Alzheimer’s. Shown are School of Medicine MDs and Alzheimer’s researchers Randall Bateman (left) and John C. Morris.

School of Medicine scientists have found a way that corrupted, disease-causing proteins spread in the brain, potentially contributing to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other brain-damaging disorders. Pictured are clumps of corrupted tau protein outside a nerve cell, as seen through an electron micrograph.

Scientists’ picture of how a gene strongly linked to Alzheimer’s disease harms the brain may have to be revised, researchers at the School of Medicine have found. Washington University’s David M. Holtzman, MD, says leading researchers recently agreed that targeting this gene is a promising approach for gaining a better understanding of and improving treatments for the disease.

Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain’s long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer’s disease. Through an international research partnership known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network (DIAN), scientists at Washington University and elsewhere evaluated pre-symptomatic markers of Alzheimer’s disease in subjects from families genetically predisposed to develop the disorder.

A marker for Alzheimer’s disease rises and falls in the spinal fluid in a daily pattern that echoes the sleep cycle, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. The pattern is strongest in healthy young people and reinforces a link between increased Alzheimer’s risk and inadequate sleep that had been discovered in animal models.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a protein made by a key Alzheimer’s gene slows the brain’s ability to get rid of amyloid beta, the main ingredient of the amyloid plaques that characterize the devastating illness.

People with a known, high risk for Alzheimer’s disease develop abnormal brain function even before the appearance of telltale, amyloid plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings suggest that a gene variant affects brain function long before the brain begins accumulating the amyloid that will eventually lead to dementia.