Gene therapy helps reverse loss of memory in mice suffering from Alzheimer's

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Washington, April 24 : Researchers have identified the protein which prevents memory consolidation when blocked.

Researchers from the Institute of Neuroscience at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have discovered the cellular mechanism involved in memory consolidation and were able to develop a gene therapy which reverses the loss of memory in mice models with initial stages of Alzheimer's disease.

The therapy consists in injecting into the hippocampus - a region of the brain essential to memory processing - a gene which causes the production of a protein blocked in patients with Alzheimer's, the "Crtc1" (CREB regulated transcription coactivator-1). The protein restored through gene therapy gives way to the signals needed to activate the genes involved in long-term memory consolidation.

To identify this protein, researchers compared gene expression in the hippocampus of healthy control mice with that of transgenic mice which had developed the disease.

Through DNA microchips, they identified the genes ("transcriptome") and the proteins ("proteome") which expressed themselves in each of the mice in different phases of the disease.

Researchers observed that the set of genes involved in memory consolidation coincided with the genes regulating Crtc1, a protein which also controls genes related to the metabolism of glucose and to cancer. The alteration of this group of genes could cause memory loss in the initial stages of Alzheimer's disease.

In persons with the disease, the formation of amyloid plaque aggregates, a process known to cause the onset of Alzheimer's disease, prevents the Crtc1 protein from functioning correctly.

"When the Crtc1 protein is altered, the genes responsible for the synapsis or connections between neurons in the hippocampus cannot be activated and the individual cannot perform memory tasks correctly", explains Carlos Saura, researcher of the UAB Institute of Neuroscience and head of the research.

The research has been published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

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Gene therapy helps reverse loss of memory in mice suffering from Alzheimer's

Gene therapy may boost power of cochlear implants, study says

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Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They used the technology to beam gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing.

The approach reported Wednesday isn't ready for human testing, but it's part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.

Normally, microscopic hair cells in a part of the inner ear called the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.

Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. They've been implanted in more than 300,000 people. While highly successful, they don't restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.

The idea behind the project: Perhaps a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves would improve hearing. Those nerves' bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins. Usually, the hair cells would provide those.

Researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales figured out a new way to deliver one of those growth factors.

They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deafened guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in a few stronger-than-normal electrical pulses.

That made the membranes of nearby cells temporarily permeable, so the gene could slip inside. Those cells began producing the growth factor, which in turn stimulated regrowth of the nerve fibers - closing some of the space between the nerves and the cochlear implant, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The animals still needed a cochlear implant to detect sound - but those given the gene therapy had twice the improvement, they concluded.

Senior author Gary Housley estimated small studies in people could begin in two or three years.

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Gene therapy may boost power of cochlear implants, study says

Study: Gene Therapy May Boost Cochlear Implants

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Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They used the technology to beam gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing.

The approach reported Wednesday isn't ready for human testing, but it's part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.

Normally, microscopic hair cells in a part of the inner ear called the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.

Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. They've been implanted in more than 300,000 people. While highly successful, they don't restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.

The idea behind the project: Perhaps a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves would improve hearing. Those nerves' bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins. Usually, the hair cells would provide those.

Researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales figured out a new way to deliver one of those growth factors.

They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deafened guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in a few stronger-than-normal electrical pulses.

That made the membranes of nearby cells temporarily permeable, so the gene could slip inside. Those cells began producing the growth factor, which in turn stimulated regrowth of the nerve fibers closing some of the space between the nerves and the cochlear implant, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The animals still needed a cochlear implant to detect sound but those given the gene therapy had twice the improvement, they concluded.

Senior author Gary Housley estimated small studies in people could begin in two or three years.

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Study: Gene Therapy May Boost Cochlear Implants

Scientists reverse memory loss in mice with Alzheimer's

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The gene therapy study is hoped to lead to the development of new drugs to treat the incurable disease

GENE THERAPY. Spanish scientists injected a gene which causes the production of a protein that is blocked in patients with Alzheimers, into the hippocampus in mice that were in the initial stages of the disease.

MADRID, Spain Spanish scientists have for the first time used gene therapy to reverse memory loss in mice with Alzheimer's, an advance that could lead to new drugs to treat the disease, they said Wednesday, April 23.

The Autonomous University of Barcelona team injected a gene which causes the production of a protein that is blocked in patients with Alzheimer's into the hippocampus a region of the brian essential to memory processing in mice that were in the initial stages of the disease.

"The protein that was reinstated by the gene therapy triggers the signals needed to activate the genes involved in long-term memory consolidation," the university said in a statement.

Gene therapy involves transplanting genes into a patient's cells to correct an otherwise incurable disease caused by a failure of one or another gene.

The finding was published in The Journal of Neuroscience and it follows 4 years of research.

"The hope is that this study could lead to the development of pharmaceutical drugs that can activate these genes in humans and allow for the recovery of memory," the head of the research team, Carlos Saura, told Agence France-Presse.

Alzheimer's, caused by toxic proteins that destroy brain cells, is the most common form of dementia.

Worldwide, 35.6 million people suffer from the fatal degenerative disease, which is currently incurable, and there are 7.7 million new cases every year, according to a 2012 report from the World Health Organization.

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Scientists reverse memory loss in mice with Alzheimer's

Cochlear Implant Plus Gene Therapy Could Restore Hearing to the Deaf

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Cochlear implants have restored hearing to many deaf people, but they havent advanced much since they were unveiled in the 1970s. That may be set to change with an exciting new advance, not in the technology of the device itself, but rather in using gene therapy to increase the devices effectiveness. Today researchers announced that theyve been able to restore tonal hearing in guinea pigs with the new method of gene delivery.

Cochlear implants, or bionic ears, work by stimulating the auditory nerve to restore a rudimentary kind of hearing. This works pretty well, butthe gap between the electrodes and the degenerating nerve is pretty big, which makes communication difficult. Andeven the state-of-the-art implants only have 22 electrodes, enabling them to hear 22 different tones. They cant, for example, distinguish between the soft buzz of a clarinet and the shrill sound of a flute.

Teams of researchers have tried to improve upon the implants over the last decade by trying to focus the electrical currents more narrowly, to stimulate a smaller, more pitch-specific area of the nerve, or to use drugs that improve the communication between the electrodes and the neurons. But this new method, reported today in Science Translational Medicine, has a distinct advantage: it actually encouraged the regrowth of the auditory nerve. This decreased the gap between the nerve and the cochlear implant, and improved communication between the two.

Image credit: Science Translational Medicine

The team implanted bionic ears indeaf guinea pigs, whose auditory systems are very similar to humans. With the device, then, they delivered DNA that coded for a protein called brain-derived neruotrophic factor (BDNF), which encourages nerves to grow. The DNA was taken up by cells in the cochlea and, after two weeks, the nerves had grown significantly toward the electrodes. When the guinea pigs hearing was tested they found that animals that were once completely deaf had their hearing restored to almost normal levels.

Its unclear, however, whether the treatment will work long-term: neuron production in the guinea pigs dropped off six weeks after the gene therapy. Researchers are also unsure whether tones heard after this treatment accurately reflect how they sound with normal hearing.

The technique is very close to being ready for human trials, where some of these questions should be answered. If it proves successful in clinical trials, the technique of combining gene therapy with device could also be used for other implants like retinal prosthesis and deep brain stimulation.

Top image credit:Elizabeth Hoffmann/Shutterstock

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Cochlear Implant Plus Gene Therapy Could Restore Hearing to the Deaf

Regrown nerves boost bionic ears

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UNSW Australia Biological Resources Imaging Laboratory and National Imaging Facility of Australia

A computer-tomography scan shows a deaf guinea pig's skull and cochlear implant.

Gene therapy delivered to the inner ear can help shrivelled auditory nerves to regrow and in turn, improve bionic ear technology, researchers report today in Science Translational Medicine1. The work, conducted in guinea pigs, suggests a possible avenue for developing a new generation of hearing prosthetics that more closely mimics the richness and acuity of natural hearing.

Sound travels from its source to ears, and eventually to the brain, through a chain of biological translations that convert air vibrations to nerve impulses. When hearing loss occurs, its usually because crucial links near the end of this chain between the ears cochlear cells and the auditory nerve are destroyed. Cochlear implants are designed to bridge this missing link in people with profound deafness by implanting an array of tiny electrodes that stimulate the auditory nerve.

Although cochlear implants often work well in quiet situations, people who have them still struggle to understand music or follow conversations amid background noise. After long-term hearing loss, the ends of the auditory nerve bundles are often frayed and withered, so the electrode array implanted in the cochlea must blast a broad, strong signal to try to make a connection, instead of stimulating a more precise array of neurons corresponding to particular frequencies. The result is an aural smearing that obliterates fine resolution of sound, akin to forcing a piano player to wear snow mittens or a portrait artist to use finger paints.

To try to repair auditory nerve endings and help cochlear implants to send a sharper signal to the brain, researchers turned to gene therapy. Their method took advantage of the electrical impulses delivered by the cochlear-implant hardware, rather than viruses often used to carry genetic material, to temporarily turn inner-ear cells porous. This allowed DNA to slip in, says lead author Jeremy Pinyon, an auditory scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

UNSW Australia Translational Neuroscience Facility, Jeremy Pinyon and Gary Housley

Gene therapy stimulated cochlear nerve growth (top) in deaf guinea pigs, compared to measurements taken before treatment (below).

Pinyon and his colleagues were able to deliver a gene encoding neurotrophin, a protein that stimulates nerve growth, to the inner-ear cells of deaf guinea pigs. After injecting the cells with a solution of DNA, they sent a handful of 20-volt pulses through the cochlear-implant electrode arrays. The cells started producing neurotrophin, and the auditory nerve began to regenerate and reach out for the cochlea once again. The researchers found that the treated animals could use their implants with a sharper, more refined signal, although they did not compare the deaf guinea pigs to those with normal hearing. The work was partially funded by Cochlear, a cochlear-implant maker based in Sydney.

Regenerating nerves and cells in the inner ear to boost cochlear implant performance has long been a goal of auditory scientists. This clever approach is the most promising to date, says Gerald Loeb, a neural prosthetics researcher at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who helped to develop the original cochlear implant. Although clinical applications are still far in the future, the ability to deliver genes to specific areas in the cochlea will probably reduce regulatory obstacles, he says. But it is unclear why cochlear implants help some patients much more than others, so whether this gene therapy translates into actual clinical benefit is still unclear.

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Regrown nerves boost bionic ears

Researchers add gene therapy to cochlear implants in deaf animals

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Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They used the technology to beam gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing.

WASHINGTON Australian researchers are trying a novel way to boost the power of cochlear implants: They used the technology to beam gene therapy into the ears of deaf animals and found the combination improved hearing.

The approach reported Wednesday isnt ready for human testing, but its part of growing research into ways to let users of cochlear implants experience richer, more normal sound.

Normally, microscopic hair cells in a part of the inner ear called the cochlea detect vibrations and convert them to electrical impulses that the brain recognizes as sound. Hearing loss typically occurs as those hair cells are lost, whether from aging, exposure to loud noises or other factors.

READ MORE: 6 Canadian game-changing ideas for global health care

Cochlear implants substitute for the missing hair cells, sending electrical impulses to directly activate auditory nerves in the brain. Theyve been implanted in more than 300,000 people. While highly successful, they dont restore hearing to normal, missing out on musical tone, for instance.

The idea behind the project: Perhaps a closer connection between the implant and the auditory nerves would improve hearing. Those nerves bush-like endings can regrow if exposed to nerve-nourishing proteins called neurotrophins. Usually, the hair cells would provide those.

Researchers at Australias University of New South Wales figured out a new way to deliver one of those growth factors.

They injected a growth factor-producing gene into the ears of deafened guinea pigs, animals commonly used as a model for human hearing. Then they adapted an electrode from a cochlear implant to beam in a few stronger-than-normal electrical pulses.

See the article here:

Researchers add gene therapy to cochlear implants in deaf animals

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The scary reality of life in 2050

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Johnny Depp is not so sure. Source: AP

I CANT wait to be a transhumanist designer when I grow up, said no child, ever.

That might not be the case for long if futurist Morris Miselowski is right. He predicts the job could become as common as a teacher or builder in the years ahead.

The renowned futurist, who has spoken at TEDx, thinks the workforce will change drastically in the next 35 years, with 60 per cent of us doing jobs that dont exist.

More: Five jobs that will disappear within five years

Most will arise from technology and the human body, dedicated to improving our health and extending human life, according to Mr Miselowski.

In the last 150 years we have doubled our life expectancy in Australia, weve done that without the technology that [is now in place] he told news.com.au.

The future of call centres? Source: ThinkStock

Here are his predictions for the top 10 jobs in 2050:

Nano medic Someone who works with medicine on a molecular level using tiny robots to investigate problems in the body and solve them from the inside out.

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The scary reality of life in 2050

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