Published in Pharmacological research
With ageing of the global society, the frequency of ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer`s disease (AD) is on the rise worldwide. Currently, there is no cure for AD, and the four drugs approved for AD only have very small effects on AD symptoms. Consequently, there are enormous efforts worldwide to identify new targets for tr...
Published in Biochimica et biophysica acta. Molecular basis of disease
Current application of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) technology in patient-specific models of neurodegenerative disorders recapitulate some of key phenotypes of diseases, representing disease-specific cellular modeling and providing a unique platform for therapeutics development. We review recent efforts toward advancing hiPSCs-deri...
Published in Molecular imaging and biology
The nicotinic acetylcholine alpha-7 receptors (α7R) are involved in a number of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD). However, their specific pathophysiologic roles are still unclear. In this context, we studied the evolution of these receptors in vivo by positron emission tomography (PET) imaging ...
Published in Nature
Published in Cellular and molecular neurobiology
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is described as cognitive and memory impairments with a sex-related epidemiological profile, affecting two times more women than men. There is emerging evidence that alternations in the hippocampal neurogenesis occur at the early stage of AD. Therapies that may effectively slow, stop, or regenerate the dying neurons in AD a...
Published in Scientific Reports
Drosophila melanogaster is a useful and highly tractable model organism for understanding the molecular mechanisms of human diseases. We previously characterized a new dUbqn knockdown model that induces learning-memory and locomotive deficits mediated by impaired proteostasis. Although proteinopathies are the main causes of neurodegenerative diseas...
Analysis of isolated meninges and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of post-mortem MS cases has shown increased gene and protein expression for the pro-inflammatory cytokines: tumour necrosis factor (TNF) and interferon-γ (IFNγ). Here we tested the hypothesis that persistent production of these cytokines in the meningeal compartment and diffusion into unde...
Published in Biology of Sex Differences
BackgroundThe role of sex hormones on cellular function is unclear. Studies show androgens and estrogens are protective in the CNS, whereas other studies found no effects or damaging effects. Furthermore, sex differences have been observed in multiple oxidative stress-associated CNS disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and Parkinson’...
Published in Scientific Reports
Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) represents a reliable tool for retinal layer volume and thickness measurement. The aim of this study was to evaluate retinal changes indicating neurodegenerative processes in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) compared to healthy controls. This was a cross-sectional, single-center stud...
Published in Scientific Reports
More than 20 unique diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease are caused by the abnormal aggregations of pathogenic proteins such as amylin, β-amyloid (Aβ), and α-synuclein. All pathogenic proteins differ from each other in biological function, primary sequences, and morphologies; however, the proteins are toxic when aggre...
