In our latest attempts to make lab rats immortal, a new compound has been shown to reverse late stage Alzheimer’s disease in lab mice. This is a rare case where the title isn’t even clickbait.
In a mouse model. The mice don’t have alzheimers they have… something we gave them that looks like it… Hopefully it is similar enough
We did something to the mice then rescued it in a different way. Hooray! Next we’ll save test tubes from cancer…again.
If you can’t get excited by incremental advancements, you should probably unsubscribe from science as a topic.
Dude it’s worse than that. I was a working neuroscientist for almost twenty years. So…jaded.
This is why almost everyone does development, not research.
Do tell
There is a lot of incremental research that gets transformed into ZOMG YOU GUYS!!! by the research office. The journals are full of papers demonstrating a complete rescue of a disease model ( and I’m an author on some of them). What the papers are really demonstrating is the inadequacy of the animal model.
Yeah, I didn’t read the whole thing but apparently only in 5xFAD mice. I wish they would have also tried it in a Tau model like PS19.
There has been a fucking epidemic of MD/scientists running to the media with miracle cures lately.
Mice to not get Alzheimers, they were engineered to show one aspect of the disease that has been promoted by fraudulent studies. As for the reversal, mouse brains are highly plastic and similar to a human baby, nothing like a >60 year old.
Well I hear we are adding more plastic to the brain through micro dosing micro plastics in our every day lives. Wait…
Mouse grandpa: John?
Mouse Grandson: Grampa, you remember me?
Mouse grandpa: Yes, I remember. It’s all coming back now. You ate my cheese and fucked my wife you piece of shit!
Sounds of mouse battle reverberating
Scientific advancements often seem like the only good news we ever seem to get.
Don’t worry, they’ll get monetized to hell.
While often true, they still end up making life better for millions of people often enough to be worth it.
I believe this population of super-mice we are making that are immune to all disease will be the dominant life form on earth after we have extincted ourselves. Im in favor of this future.
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They will do our bidding in forever thanks to us.
An unforgettable moment for those mice
Oh, yeah? How come they still cant tell us how fucking magnets work?
Eat shit, “science.”
Now we work towards changing elderly people into mice to cure their Alzheimer’s!
Let’s see if it works for Charlie now.
With all the things we have learned from mice physiology, we could make them super-mice that had supreme physique, intelligence and lived well for a hundred years - move over AGI, the mice overlords are here…
it’s lab mice. it’s NAD+. i can’t remember because i’m not an ad researcher, but there are 3 models of AD. one is NAD+, two aren’t. Most of the research was going into NAD+ or another, and they discovered that that specific model was not going to help human patients. It did nothing to effect research or funding. that was about… 15 years ago? so forgive me if i don’t get up.
I mean they look happy
Unfortunately, mice don’t get Alzheimer’s disease. This has been a claim for a while in animal models. I’m sure it’s good scientific work, but the press release is making wild claims.
I bet the mice wish they could forget they are stuck in a lab
only the bad ones ;_; The one where they learn to drive sounds fun af. Can’t wait for the human trials in Maryland.
Aahh, those lucky mice. Yet another cure for Alzheimer, without counting the multiple cancer miracle-like cures.
Any news for human yet?
Right so Alzheimer’s results in the death of neurons.
Humans cannot regrow neurons. Most animals cannot.
The few exceptions are in one small area of the brains limbic system.
Again. Not supported to happen in humans. But some theories say it might.
Even so. There is no drug that can restore neurons lost.
No drug that can restore the connections between neurons that are lost.
There already were drugs discovered 20 years ago that cure rats of AD related plaques and tau proteins. Doesn’t work in humans . Probably because those rats are genetically engineered to produce plaques and tau proteins.
Not the same as a human disease model.
There is no drug that can restore neurons lost.
Might be a stupid question, but could stem cells do that?
So a few things.
The brain tissue is formed in layers.
Each layer has specific types of neurons and specific types of connections. Which connect specific regions.
when your brain develops as an embryo, there are two primary ways that neuron connections are formed to make sure the right type of neuron with the right pathway is made.
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Scaffolding. Othe types of neurons and cells are grown in a way so that neurons can “grow up them”. Think of like lattice fences for vine plants. Chemical signals are also sent that tell these neurons where to grow and where to connect. Kind of like a “hey buddy, over here”.
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The other big one is folding of brain sections.
This part is kinda insane but as the brain is developing it starts sectioning out pretty early and then these sections do this folding thing. Where they sort of turn themselves inward. This folding also helps form the layers of the brain within the sub organs of the brain. Like the brain stem, hippocampus thalamus (other parts of limbic system) etc. There are a lot of sub organs in the brain.
And I guess the 3rd thing I should mention even though you probably figured it out is that these two things cannot occur in adults.
The scaffolding thing isn’t quite as simple as I’ve said. But trust me. It can’t occur in adults either.
So now you know two fundamentals of neuro development that even a fair number of people in my field seem to be ignorant of.
Now what does this mean. ?
It means you can’t just “repair” or “replace” missing tissue.
This is why there aren’t any mammals that regrow brain tissue. None regrow cortical tissue.
The only neurogenesis (neuron growth) observed is a small tiny area in the hippocampus (part of limbic system ) and that’s a whole other complicated thing. But I’m willing to give you the basics if you want. Just ask.
Okay so. Back to fixing the brain.
Same problem as fixing severed nerves in the spine but actually worse. You can’t get a neuron to make a connection if there isn’t scaffolding. So you can strengthen something if there is something there that new connections can follow. This is why some people can restore some nerve loss. If there are some nerves still connected then with physical and occupational therapy, new connections can be formed and strengthened. (I’m talking about limbs, not brain. Such as with spinal injury. In strokes it works differently; by reprogramming existing architecture).
But if there is nothing then that is not possible.
You also can’t easily tell a stem cell to grow into a very specific type of neuron and connect in the right way.
A large portion of neurons are inhibitory. And they must be placed properly.
I give this example to explain why stem cells can’t fix a brain
Let’s say you have a circuit board. And some circuits are burnt out. So you cut up a bunch of pieces of solder and thin wires and scatter it on top of the circuit board and try to power it up.
There is pretty much no way that adding stem cells to the brain won’t result in bad things happening.
There was a study that did this… It gave people brain tumors.
There are still on going studies to potentially use stem cells but honestly there is a very good reason why mammals can’t regrow cortical tissue.
I did a quick search and was surprised to see people still trying to do this line of research. As I said with the circuit board example, you can’t control the errors that would be created.
Brain neuron connections (aka the architecture) is the mind. You can’t alter these without people loosing something.
A few years ago (7 ish years?) when the study I’m thinking of came out, there was a lot of talk and a lot of studies were cancelled. I was working in pharm Alzheimer’s research at the time at a clinic. I remember people thought it was going to be some miracle fix. But the brain is much more complicated than , like regrowing a damaged kidney or something.
Which also isn’t currently possible with modern medicine.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_the_cerebral_cortex
Here this “neural tube” is talking about that folding I was referring to. During embryo development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_tube
There is also cortical folding (brain wrinkles) that form during later development. That’s a different thing but also ads to the difficulty of repairing the brain.
I’ve got my neuro anatomy book out. It has some great images so here they are. I think the way the brain folds in is really cool.
Also. First image is the front of the book. I also have a ebook copy somewhere I got for free on library genesis.
It’s an anatomy book. So it’s not light reading. But it’s also full of real brain images. So if you are interested in the topic, get it on library genesis.
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Humans cannot regrow neurons
That’s false. Neurogenesis continues well into adulthood. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/the-book-of-neurogenesis
Just to point out. This article theorizes neurogenesis in the hippocampus MAY be possible in humans because it’s been supported to occur in rats.
This is exactly what I said. It’s theorized to occur in humans in a very specific area of the hippocampus (not in cortical regions or any other area of the brain,). It’s not supported with evidence to occur. It’s only theorized to occur.
This article is more specifically talking about the research on exercise and hippocampus neurogenesis in rats. Which showed a positive correlation.
