New hope for devastating neurodegenerative disease

New hope for devastating neurodegenerative disease

When a credible new idea emerges for repositioning a diabetes drug for devastating brain disorders, it is essential to give that idea attention. In this issue of Brain, the team led by Dr Meissner provide such a possibility (Bassil et al., 2017). More specifically, they provide a solid rationale for considering an FDA approved drug, exendin-4, as an entirely new approach for treating multiple s...

Neurodegenerative disease: models, mechanisms, and a new hope

Neurodegeneration is a feature of many debilitating, incurable diseases that are rapidly rising in prevalence, such as Parkinson's disease. There is an urgent need to develop new and more effective therapeutic strategies to combat these devastating diseases. Models - from cell-based systems, to unicellular organisms, to complex animals - have proven to be a useful tool to help the research comm...

A glimmer of hope for a devastating complication.

Genus Boswellia as a new candidate for neurodegenerative disorders

Neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by progressive loss of neurons, share common mechanisms such as apoptotic cell death, mitochondrial dysfunction, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Genus Boswellia is a genus in the Burseraceae family. It comprises several species traditionally used for treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases, cerebral edema, chronic pain syndrome, gastrointestinal d...

Parkinson’s disease: no NOP, new hope

Nociceptin/orphanin FQ (henceforth N/OFQ) is the endogenous ligand of the so-called nociceptin opioid peptide (NOP) receptor, a.k.a. Opioid Receptor Like 1 (ORL1) receptor, a G-protein coupled receptor which couples to Gi/o and intracellular kinases, among which mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases [1]. In 2004, we provided the first evidence that N/OFQ might play a role in Parkinson's disea...