A research team composed of University of Kentucky researchers has published a paper which provides the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer’s disease. The UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has also received significant new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to further this line of study.
\nChris Norris, an associate professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Molecular and Biomedical Pharmacology, as well as a member of the faculty at the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, is the senior author on a paper. The first author on the article, Jennifer L. Furman, was a graduate student in the Norris laboratory during completion of the study.
\nThe astrocyte is a very abundant non-neuronal cell type that performs absolutely critical functions for maintaining healthy nervous tissue. However, in neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer\u2019s disease, many astrocytes exhibit clear physical changes often referred to as ‘astrocyte activation.’ The appearance of activated astrocytes at very early stages of Alzheimer’s has led to the idea that astrocytes contribute to the emergence and\/or maintenance of other pathological markers of the disease, including synaptic dysfunction, neuroinflammation and accumulation of amyloid plaques.
\nUsing an animal model, researchers directly modulated the activation state of hippocampal astrocytes using a form of gene therapy.
\nMice received the gene therapy at a very young age, before the development of extensive amyloid plaque pathology, and were assessed 10 months later on a variety of Alzheimer’s biomarkers.
\nThe research team found that inhibition of astrocyte activation blunted the activation of microglia (a cell that mediates neuroinflammation), reduced toxic amyloid levels, improved synaptic function and plasticity, and preserved cognitive function.
\nNorris and collaborators suggest that similar astrocyte-based approaches could be developed to treat humans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, or possibly other neurodegenerative diseases. This study provides proof of principle that therapeutically targeting astrocytes can be beneficial.\nUniversity of Kentucky<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A research team composed of University of Kentucky researchers has published a paper which provides the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer’s disease. The UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has also received significant new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to further this line of study. Chris Norris, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}