Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine have characterized 100 conserved Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk orthologue genes in Drosophila and found several with unknown roles in brain structure, function and stress resilience. The implication of this finding is that new pathways of neurodegeneration have been revealed, offering new insights into the genetic complexity of AD.
A four-way interagency initiative in South Korea, started in 2020, is working to bolster funding for the local medical device industry and grow homegrown devices for the global market.
Transition Bio Inc. and Voyager Therapeutics Inc. have entered into a drug discovery collaboration and license option agreement for novel, selective small molecules for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) with TDP-43 pathology.
The U.S. FDA is turning the clock back more than 20 years to advance women’s health by narrowing the boxed warning on hormone replacement therapies (HRTs) for menopause. The agency announced at a Nov. 10 news conference that it’s working with companies to update their HRT labeling to remove references to risks of cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and probable dementia.
Synchron Inc.'s recent $200 million raise for its Stentrode brain-computer interface platform comes at a pivotal time for the technology. Advances in BCI development, ongoing clinical trials and growing market demand are drawing increased investor interest in the technology which has the potential to transform the lives of millions of people. At the same time, government agencies are closely monitoring the field, recognizing the potential while urging caution about the risks involved.
Medical Microinstruments Inc., reported the U.S. FDA approval of an investigational device exemption for a study using its Symani surgical system for treating Alzheimer’s disease, one of its earliest forays into the brain.
Sage Therapeutics Inc. has described sterol derivatives acting as glutamate receptor ionotropic, NMDA 2A (GRIN2A; GluN2A) negative allosteric modulators reported to be useful for the treatment of neurological disorders.
In Alzheimer’s disease, microglia act as a double-edged sword. They can either protect the brain or worsen the damage, depending on their activation state. Inflammatory activation harms healthy neurons. However, a study reveals that a special type of microglia expressing specific receptors and behaving like T cells may help mitigate this neurodegenerative condition.
Despite the formidable challenges for developing precision psychiatry, the approach is notching its first successes in the preclinical and even some clinical settings. Many individual studies as well as large projects like the Psychiatric Ratings using Intermediate Markers studies and the Psychiatric Biomarkers Network have been looking at multiple biomarker types, and have begun to identify predictors of specific symptoms, or disease progression.
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