Scientists use living human brain tissue to accelerate the hunt for dementia | Alzheimer

Scientists have used living human brain tissue to imitate the early stages of Alzheimer’s diseaseThe most common form of dementia, in a breakthrough that accelerates hunting for healing.

In a world, a British team was initially successfully exposed to healthy brain tissue from life Nhs Patients of a toxic form of a protein associated with Alzheimer’s – from patients who died of the disease – to show how it damages the connections between brain cells in real time.

The groundbreaking step offered a rare and strong opportunity to see yourself in human brain cells. Experts said the new type of examination of the disease could make it easier to test new medication and increase the chances of finding those that work.

Dementia is a major threat to health and social care systems worldwide. The number of people affected by 2050 has a tripling of almost 153 million, which is based on why the search for new ways to investigate the illness and to accelerate the search for treatments is a health priority.

In the study, scientists and neurosurgeons in Edinburgh teamed up to show for the first time how a toxic form of a protein that can be liable and destroyed with Alzheimer’s, Amyloid Beta, vital connections between brain cells.

Tiny fragments of healthy brain tissue were collected by cancer patients, while they were subjected to routine surgery to remove tumors in the Royal Attorney at Edinburgh.

In peeling -dressed scientists, together with surgical teams, in company transactions were stationed that were ready to get the healthy brain tissue that would otherwise have been rejected.

As soon as the brain pieces were called back, the scientists put them in glass bottles with oxygen -containing artificial spine fluid before jumping in taxis to transport the samples into their laboratory for a few minutes away.

“We returned to the laboratory as well,” said Dr. Claire Durrant, a race against dementia colleagues and the British dementia research institute, which is led at the Center for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

There rehearsals were cut into thin pieces, less than a third millimeter thick and created in small dishes. Each living brain tissue was kept in an incubator at 37 ° C in a nutrient -rich liquid to imitate the body temperature. “And then we start experiments almost immediately,” said Durrant.

Fragments of the human brain were kept alive for up to fourteen days in courts, with the patient’s permission.

The researchers extracted the toxic form of amyloid beta of people who died of Alzheimer’s, and then turned to the brain tissue for healthy brain towels in their dishes. “We try to imitate Alzheimer’s disease,” said Durrant.

In contrast to a normal form of the protein, the brain did not try to repair damage caused by the toxic form of the amyloid beta.

Even small changes in the natural amyloid beta – increasingly or decreasing – were enough to disturb the brain cells. This indicates that the brain requires a finely coordinated sweet spot of the protein to work properly, said Durrant.

“We work with the neurosurgical team of the University of Edinburgh and have shown that living human brain slices can be used to examine basic questions about Alzheimer’s disease,” she said.

Skip the past newsletter -promotion

After newsletter promotion

“We believe that this tool could help accelerate the results of the laboratory in patients and to bring us closer to a step that is free from the heartache of dementia.”

The breakthrough enables scientists to prevent medication with the best probability at home, the loss of synapses – connections that enable the news flow between brain cells and are of crucial importance for healthy brain function. Alzheimer’s attacking synapses and her loss predict greatly reduced memory and thinking skills.

The Durrant team also found that brain discs from the temporal lobe, a region that is known that it was affected early in Alzheimer’s, released a higher Tau level, another key disease protein.

This could explain why this part of the brain in the early Alzheimer’s is particularly susceptible, since an increased dew release can enable the toxic forms of this protein to spread faster between the cells.

Research was supported by Race Against Dementia, a charity organization that supports his wife’s dementia diagnosis and a donation of 1 million GBP from the James Dyson Foundation, a charity, a charity, supported, supported, supported medical research and engineering training.

Dyson said the breakthrough was “to solve one of the most devastating problems of our time”.

“Cooperation with brain surgeons and their approving patients to collect samples of the living human brain and to keep them alive in the laboratory is a groundbreaking method,” he said. “It enables researchers to better examine the Alzheimer disease for real human brain cells instead of relying on animal substitutes such as mice.”

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, group leader at the British dementia research institute, welcomed the important development. To see the early Alzheimer’s echo time offered scientists a new instrument to better understand and treat the disease, she said.

She said: “The use of living human tissue samples that have been generously donated by people who undergo surgery to remove brain tumors enables scientists to examine how the living human brain reacts to toxic proteins that are produced in Alzheimer’s and enable new treatments in human brain.”