Brain Cell News and Research

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Researchers discover how brain cells can survive a stroke

Brain researchers at the University of Oslo in Norway have penetrated deeply into the innermost secrets of the brain to find out how brain cells can survive a stroke.

26 Nov 2008

Researchers find clue to safer obesity drugs

Once hailed as a miracle weight-loss drug, Fen-phen was removed from the market more than a decade ago for inducing life-threatening side effects, including heart valve lesions. Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center are trying to understand how Fen-phen behaves in the brain in order to develop safer anti-obesity drugs with fewer side effects.

25 Nov 2008

Researchers discover how red wine may reduce Alzheimer's

Scientists call it the "French paradox" - a society that, despite consuming food high in cholesterol and saturated fats, has long had low death rates from heart disease.

21 Nov 2008

Marijuana may be good for the aging brain

The more research they do, the more evidence Ohio State University scientists find that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells.

19 Nov 2008

Scientists gain new insights into regulation of calpains

Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have gained new insights into regulation of one of the body's enzyme workhorses called calpains.

19 Nov 2008

Neuralstem enters stem cell collaboration for Huntington's disease in Germany

Neuralstem, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a collaboration with Professor Guido Nikkah Ph.D, of Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany, to advance development of Neuralstem's human neural stem cell therapies.

18 Nov 2008

Accera to launch Axona, medical food product for Alzheimer's in 2009

Accera, Inc. will launch Axona in the United States for Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the first quarter of 2009.

18 Nov 2008

Exercise increases brain growth factor and receptors, prevents stem cell drop in middle age

A new study confirms that exercise can reverse the age-related decline in the production of neural stem cells in the hippocampus of the mouse brain, and suggests that this happens because exercise restores a brain chemical which promotes the production and maturation of new stem cells.

18 Nov 2008

A link found between nicotine addiction and autism

Scientists have identified a relationship between two proteins in the brain that has links to both nicotine addiction and autism.

17 Nov 2008

New evidence on how proteins help cells fix broken DNA

Aucott et al. report the first in vivo experiments on the heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) family, which sidles up to silent DNA.

17 Nov 2008

Glucocorticoids may cause damage in the brain

A class of drugs that are used in premature infants to treat chronic lung damage can cause damage in the brain.

17 Nov 2008

Cooling brain prevents cell death in young mice exposed to anesthesia

New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests cooling the brain may prevent the death of nerve cells that has been observed in infant mice exposed to anesthesia.

17 Nov 2008

Seniors with sharp brains reveal first secrets of sharp memory in old age

Maybe you have an 85-year-old grandfather who still whips through the newspaper crossword puzzle every morning or a 94-year-old aunt who never forgets a name or a face.

16 Nov 2008

New research reveals key steps in HIV's assault on the brain

Scientists have unraveled in unprecedented detail the cascade of events that go wrong in brain cells affected by HIV, a virus whose assault on the nervous system continues unabated despite antiviral medications that can keep the virus at bay for years in the rest of the body.

16 Nov 2008

Discovery of key contributor to Alzheimer's disease process

Walter J. Lukiw, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Ophthalmology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, is the lead author of a paper identifying, for the first time, a specific function of a fragment of ribonucleic acid (RNA), once thought to be no more than a byproduct, in regulating inflammation and the development of Alzheimer's disease.

16 Nov 2008

Breakthrough in cellular analysis

Like skilled assassins, many diseases seem to know exactly what types of cells to attack.

16 Nov 2008

Breakthrough in cell-type analysis offers new ways to study development and disease

Like skilled assassins, many diseases seem to know exactly what types of cells to attack. While decimating one cadre of cells, diseases will inexplicably spare a seemingly identical group of neighbors. What makes cells vulnerable or not depends largely on the kinds and amounts of proteins they produce - their 'translational profile,' in the lingo of molecular biology. For this reason, scientists have struggled to parse the subtle molecular differences among the hundreds of specialized cell types that are tangled together in tissues like the brain.

13 Nov 2008