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Update 03/04/2020

Updated: Apr 3, 2020


Welcome to my Research Associate blog,

I will be aiming to provide regular, monthly updates of my day-to-day work in the Defying Dementia labs as well as giving updates on research and progress we are making.

As I am sure you are aware in the current climate, many research labs have shut down, including the labs at Lancaster University. But this does not mean that our work for Defying Dementia is on hold!



But before I get to our new way of working from home, I would like to tell you a little bit about the last few months in the Defying Dementia lab. Some of you may already know quite a bit about our work. Perhaps you have listened to presentations during our Defying Dementia Day on campus or you have spoken to one of us at the Bay Information Hub, but I would like to give you a little bit more of an in depth update on what I have been working on in the past few weeks.

I have recently been developing a brain cell model to test our new 'tau inhibitor'. A tau inhibitor aims to prevent the development of tau protein tangles in the brain

As you can imagine, in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease, many things aren’t quite as ‘they should be’. As with many diseases, areas in our body have changed and are now not functioning as before. In Alzheimer’s, one of the things that goes wrong is a protein called tau, which usually stabilizes microtubules; microtubules build networks in our cells. They act as the cell’s own transport system and allow ‘communication’ between cells and also functions as a sort of skeleton to maintain cell shape.

In the brains of people living with Alzheimer’s, tau detaches from the network and builds aggregates, which are effectively big clumps of the protein. These clumps cause dysfunctions in the cell and impair the communication between cells. Our brains are made of a network of cells, all interlinked, ‘talking to each other’. When these links are interrupted, the brain cannot function properly. The goal is hence, to stop tau from forming aggregates and our lab has identified something that impedes this aggregation – an ‘inhibitor’.

Before we can think about actually treating people with such a drug [inhibitor] or any drug, we need to test it in models. This means we are trying to model the conditions of a human brain. I am working on brain cells, which are grown in a dish. To create a cell model, I am treating them with several ‘chemicals’ until they resemble brain cells in Alzheimer’s. This process has taken several weeks until the cell model was optimised, but is now readily waiting for me to return to the lab. But we do not just need ideal cells, we also need the tau aggregates inside these cells to test our inhibitor. For this, I made some tau in our lab, which is then injected directly into the cells. Half of the cells will be treated with our inhibitor and the other half won’t, so we can look at the difference between the two. There are tests that allow us to monitor tau aggregation in the treated and the untreated cells.


I am also working on an advanced model with the help of some other scientists, which allows us to make actual brain cells from a skin swab (completely noninvasive) of people with Alzheimer’s - very exciting stuff! But I shall tell you a bit more about this next time.

For now, as we are working from home, we continue to plan out future experiments and have regular meetings via video call to discuss our work and next steps. Although the lab work has been interrupted, we continue our research and will be ready to put our plans in action as soon as lab work continues!

So for now, thank you very much for your continued support and stay safe during this difficult period.


Best wishes,


Norah


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