In the absence of a cure, the number of people who suffer from neurodegenerative diseases in the future will be staggering. Because these diseases primarily strike older people, and our aging population is increasing, it is estimated that more than 12 million Americans will be afflicted by neurodegeneration 30 years…

Scientists say they have discovered a molecular link between aging and a major genetic cause of both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), two related neurodegenerative diseases with shared genetic risk factors. The findings (“TBK1 Suppresses RIPK1-Driven Apoptosis and Inflammation during Development and in Aging”), published in Cell,…

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the California Institute for Biomedical Research (CALIBR) have found that some types of small-molecule drugs, including marketed anticancer drugs, may work in part by binding to disease-related noncoding RNAs. Their discovery could open up new avenues of research for developing small-molecule drugs against…

Drug discovery company Verge Genomics announced it will lead a consortium comprising the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and VIB, the life sciences research institute, in Flanders, Belgium to sequence the genes expressed in the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease at a single-cell resolution. According to Verge this…

An international team led by neuroscientists at Université de Montréal (UdeM) reports the discovery of a basic molecular mechanism that better helps understand how Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), works. Their finding may eventually lead to new treatments for the debilitating disease, which cripples people by removing the…

A team at Stanford University School of Medicine has used CRISPR/Cas9 technology to gain new insights into the genes that might represent new targets for the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Led by Aaron Gitler, Ph.D., professor of genetics, and Michael Bassik, Ph.D., assistant professor of genetics, the team…

Oxford BioDynamics (OBD) said today it will partner with Holos Life Sciences to develop noninvasive epigenetic biomarkers associated with sports-related concussions, through a collaboration whose value was not disclosed. The collaboration will use OBD’s EpiSwitch platform to help determine and monitor systemic epigenetic changes and potential physiological reprogramming due to…

A team of researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have published findings linking a variant of the UBQLN4 gene to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease for the New York Yankees great who was forced to retire from baseball due to ALS. The…

DiamiR said today it has won a three-year, $2.75 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase IIB grant from the NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) toward accelerating development of its Alzheimer’s disease diagnostic. DiamiR’s CogniMIR test is designed to detect Alzheimer's at the presymptomatic, mild cognitive impairment and dementia…

Contained within the convoluted mass that resides in our skulls is not only the entirety of autonomic muscular signals that control our life-sustaining functions, but arguably more important, at least from an existential point of view, the chemo-electrical constituents that define every individual’s personality. Most often this is why the…

Clinical-stage biotech Verge Genomics, which is pioneering the use of artificial intelligence and human data, says its potential first-in-class therapeutic candidate for all forms of ALS has exhibited positive safety and tolerability data in its Phase I clinical trial. The candidate, VRG50635, was dosed up to the maximum single and…