Alzheimer & Parkinson

FURIN cleaves a subset of proproteins into functional mature fragments. Evidence suggests that FURIN is involved in brain development and the associated diseases, whereas the potential mechanisms remain incompletely understood. Here, we report that cerebral FURIN-deficient mice exhibit cognitive decline and neurodegeneration. Lipid droplets (LDs) that are preferentially accumulated in astrocytes correlate with an increase of the LD markers PLIN2 and PLIN3, and conversely a decreased level of...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease that manifests motor and non-motor symptoms due to the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. While its pathogenesis is multifactorial, with genetic as well as environmental components, more and more evidence suggests that nutrition and diet play an important role in regulating both the development and progression of the disease through crosstalk with genetics, a term known as nutrigenomics. This review discusses...

Cellular senescence contributes to age-related neurodegeneration, yet its manifestation varies across brain cell types and senescence-inducing stressors. Here, we investigated senescence hallmarks in five human brain cell lines - astrocytes, endothelial cells, microglia, oligodendrocytes, and dopaminergic-like neurons - using chronic 5-Bromodeoxyuridine treatment and validated our findings in primary cells and alternative toxin-induced models. Principal component analysis and transcriptional...

Transcriptome- and proteome-wide association studies (TWAS/PWAS) have proven successful in prioritizing genes and proteins whose genetically regulated expression modulates disease risk, but they ignore potential co-expression and interaction effects. To address this limitation, we introduce the co-expression-wide association study (COWAS) method, which can identify pairs of genes or proteins whose genetically regulated co-expression is associated with complex traits. COWAS first trains models to...

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the brain's neurodegenerative diseases. It is distinguished by a progressive mental, social, and behavioral deterioration. It affects the person's capacity, thinking, attention, reasoning, social behavior and functionality to achieve independence. The classical diagnosis process of AD consists of variety of neuroimaging scan approaches such as computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography. Classical cerebrospinal fluid...

Parkinson's disease (PD), Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and multiple system atrophy (MSA), are characterized by the misfolding and aggregation of alpha-synuclein (αSyn). Compelling evidence showed that αSyn aggregates exist as distinct conformational strains in different synucleinopathies. Recently, we reported that the αSyn Seed Amplification Assay (αSyn-SAA) can amplify and distinguish αSyn strains from PD and MSA. In this study, we investigate whether MSA-seeded, SAA-amplified αSyn fibrils...

While the clinical utility of conventional antibody therapies is undeniable, their therapeutic potential is often constrained high antigen loads and the recycling of antibody-antigen complexes via neonatal Fc receptor (FcRn). Here, we present a platform, based on a design similar to bispecific antibodies, FcγRIIb-Targeting Chimeras (FcRTAC). These constructs recognise antigens with one arm and bind FcγRIIb with the other arm to harness the unique endocytic properties of FcγRIIb to direct the...

The progressive accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the biochemical mechanisms of their formation and the consequences associated with plaque formation remain elusive. In female 5xFAD and APP^(NL-G-F) mice, we map region-specific, plaque-associated lipids with large molecular coverage including isomers. We describe a multimodal framework that integrates matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization with laser-induced postionization...

Prime editing offers versatile genome modifications with therapeutic potential; yet its use to modulate neural circuitry remains underexplored. Here, we used adeno-associated viral vectors to deliver prime editors into the mouse brain and introduced the naturally occurring Adrb1^(A187V) variant of the β1-adrenergic receptor, linked to short sleep in humans and mice. Editing reached up to 28.1% in the cortex six months after intracerebroventricular injection and increased excitability of...

UBB^(+1), a ubiquitin variant protein resulting from a frameshift in the ubiquitin-B gene, is a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer disease (AD). At the cellular level, UBB^(+1) disrupts the ubiquitin-proteasome system while inducing autophagy. Notably, UBB^(+1) itself is secreted via autophagosome-like vesicles. Here, we demonstrate that UBB^(+1) can be removed from the cell by degradative and secretory autophagy. Sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1)/p62 functions as a pivotal ubiquitin receptor for...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by neuronal cell death, brain atrophy, and cognitive decline. Aggregation of Tau protein in neurons is a critical factor in the pathogenesis of AD. Tau aggregates increase as the disease progresses and contribute to neuronal cell death. This study investigated the role of ubiquitin-specific protease 10 (USP10) in Tau pathology and neuronal viability in AD. We found that the expression of USP10 was reduced in the...

The glymphatic system was initially considered as a perivascular channel, responsible for the clearance of substances within the brain. With the deepening comprehension of the functions of the extracellular space (ECS) and the discovery of meningeal lymphatic vessels and subarachnoid lymphatic-like membrane, it is proposed that the glymphatic system should be a complex system encompassing the perivascular space, ECS, and lymphatic-like structures, and it plays crucial roles in the delivery of...

Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder, is marked by dopaminergic neuron loss and α-synuclein aggregation. Although Braak staging based on Lewy body pathology stratifies disease progression, clinical variability persists. Identifying stage-specific molecular signatures is essential for developing effective progressive biomarkers. Here, we integrated midbrain transcriptomic data from microarray, bulk RNA-seq, and snRNA-seq platforms. Subsequently, to...

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Chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), once considered a secondary or auxiliary degradation pathway, is now recognized as a central regulator of synaptic proteostasis. A recent study by Khawaja et al. (2025) in Nature Cell Biology provides compelling evidence that CMA actively remodels the synaptic proteome in a sex-specific manner. Using a conditional knockout strategy based on Lamp2a-floxed mice crossed with a Camk2a-Cre driver line to achieve excitatory neuron-specific deletion of Lamp2a in...

Replicability analysis is a cornerstone for identifying genuine genetic associations in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), yet existing methods are constrained by their failure to account for linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure among single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or underuse of auxiliary information, limiting their reliability and statistical power. We develop CARLIS, a comprehensive covariate-assisted replicability analysis method to enhance both statistical rigor and biological...

Timely and accessible tools for detecting preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) are essential for early intervention, yet reliance on MRI biomarkers limits scalability. Using longitudinal data from 210 cognitively normal older adults in ADNI, we compared the predictive value of verbal episodic memory, hippocampal volume, and a visuospatial composite. Over a 7-year window, 106 participants progressed to mild cognitive impairment (MCI), while 104 remained stable. At baseline, Immediate Recall on...

CONCLUSIONS: The efficacy and safety of anti-amyloid mAbs in AD may differ based on patients' demographic and genetic factors. These findings highlight the potential for personalised treatment strategies and inform national drug policies. Further research is needed to evaluate long-term outcomes and address under-studied patient populations.

The brain is a metabolically vulnerable organ as neurons have both high resting metabolic rates and the need for local rapid conversion of carbon sources to ATP during activity. Midbrain dopamine neurons are thought to be particularly vulnerable to metabolic perturbations, as a subset of these are the first to undergo degeneration in Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder long suspected to be in part driven by deficits in mid-brain bioenergetics. In skeletal muscle, energy homeostasis...