A NEW brain scan that shows how Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are caused has been developed by British scientists.
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| A new brainscan technique could be the key to curing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
The breakthrough may lead to drugs that target rogue proteins behind the devastating conditions.
The technique makes it possible to
study why they become toxic, using 'multi-dimensional super-resolution
imaging.' This enables changes in the surfaces of individual molecules to
be observed as they clump together.
The tool may allow researchers to discover how proteins 'misfold' and eventually destroy nerve cells in the brain, and could lead to better treatments.
Dr Steven Lee, of the University of Cambridge, said: "These proteins start out in a relatively harmless form, but when they clump together, something important changes.
"But using conventional imaging techniques, it has not been possible to see what is going on at the molecular level."
In neurodegenerative diseases naturally occurring proteins fold into the wrong shape.
The brain scans show what is going on, on a molecular level
The research was conducted at the University of Cambridge
But before any such treatment can be developed, there first needs to be a precise understanding of how oligomers form and why.
Explained Dr Lee: "There is something special about oligomers, and we want to know what it is. We have developed new tools that will help us answer these questions."
When using conventional microscopes, physics makes it impossible to zoom in past a certain point.
Essentially, there is an innate blurriness so anything below a certain size will appear as a foggy blob because light waves spread when they are focused on such a tiny spot.
Amyloid fibrils and oligomers are smaller than this limit so it's very difficult to directly visualise what is going on.
Misfolded proteins in the brain could be the key to finding a cure
But state of the art super resolution techniques, which are 10 to 20 times better than optical microscopes, have allowed researchers to get around these limitations and view biological and chemical processes at the nanoscale.
Dr Lee and his colleagues have taken this one step further, and are now able to not only determine the location of a molecule, but also the environmental properties of single ones simultaneously.
The technique known as sPAINT (spectrally-resolved points accumulation for imaging in nanoscale topography), uses a chemical dye to map the 'hydrophobicity' of amyloid fibrils and oligomers.
Super resolution techniques are up to 20 times better than optical microscopes
The waterproof property changes as they stick together and it had been suggested there was a link between this and the toxicity of these proteins.
Now, for the first time, it has been possible to watch hydrophobicity at such high resolution.
The sPAINT technique is easy to implement, requiring the addition of just a single transmission diffraction gradient onto a super resolution microscope.
Writing in Nature Communications, the researchers say the ability to map hydrophobicity at the nanoscale could be used to understand other biological processes in future.
Slide Show:
http://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/736042/Alzheimers-Parkinsons-breakthrough-brain-scan-shows-diseases-caused
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