DiscoveR8 - News for Life Science - huntington's disease

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Old gastrointestinal drug slows neurodegenerative diseases

sea-maid submitted, created time 1 day 21 hours (www.eurekalert.org)

Recent animal studies have shown that clioquinol – an eighty-year-old drug once used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders – can reverse the progression of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. Scientists, however, had a variety of theories to attempt to explain how a single compound could have such similar effects on three unrelated neurodegenerative disorders.

Researchers at McGill University have discovered a dramatic possible new answer: According to Dr

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Therapeutic application of histone deacetylase inhibitors for central nervous system disorders

sea-maid submitted, created time 2 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

Histone deacetylases (HDACs) — enzymes that affect the acetylation status of histones and other important cellular proteins — have been recognized as potentially useful therapeutic targets for a broad range of human disorders. Pharmacological manipulations using small-molecule HDAC inhibitors — which may restore transcriptional balance to neurons, modulate cytoskeletal function, affect immune responses and enhance protein degradation pathways — have been beneficial in various experimental models of brain diseases

5

Therapeutic application of histone deacetylase inhibitors for central nervous system disorder

jerry submitted, created time 2 months 3 weeks (www.nature.com)

Histone deacetylases (HDACs) — enzymes that affect the acetylation status of histones and other important cellular proteins — have been recognized as potentially useful therapeutic targets for a broad range of human disorders. Pharmacological manipulations using small-molecule HDAC inhibitors — which may restore transcriptional balance to neurons, modulate cytoskeletal function, affect immune responses and enhance protein degradation pathways — have been beneficial in various experimental models of brain diseases

9

Monkey Model of Huntington's Disease

jerry submitted, created time 7 months 2 weeks (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

Researchers often rely on mice to study a host of genetic diseases in the lab. That's not a satisfactory approach for many neurodegenerative illnesses, which involve cognitive and behavioral symptoms that don't map easily from human patients to rodents.

Now, in a development that opens the door to modeling such illnesses in primates, researchers have created the first transgenic monkeys with neurological signs of Huntington's disease.