Using an innovative computational approach to analyze vast brain cell gene expression datasets, researchers at MIT and Sorbonne Université have found that Huntington’s disease may progress to advanced stages more because of a degradation of the cells’ health maintenance systems than because of increased damage from the disease pathology itself.

Protein Complex Shifts DNA Shape to Let Progenitor Cells Become Neurons

While the human brain has over 400 miles of total vasculature, little is known about the tiny capillaries that make up much of this intricate labyrinth of blood vessels critical for delivering oxygenated blood and nutrients to billions of brain cells.

Gladstone researchers have shown in mice that CNS B-cell lymphoma cells cluster at sites where there is a leak in the blood-brain barrier. They also found that a blood protein called fibrinogen, which normally participates in blood clotting, promotes this clustering.