Every body is different.
We differ by means of our metabolism, where one can eat like a horse and not gain weight and the other merely thinks of a bagel and gains two pounds. And, as we all discover this time of year, some have the ability to fight of colds and illness quicker than others because our immune systems are different. Because of examples like this, it is still a question as to who and why a neurodegenerative disease develops in any one person“
The example I give, when you crack open a raw egg, that gelatinous, white part of the egg, that’s a properly folded protein,” said Dr. Anne Messer, principal investigator at the Neural Stem Cell Institute in Rensselaer. Messer’s everyday vernacular involves nucleotides, deoxyribonucleic acid and protein (though, not the kind you digest). Our bodies produce proteins, manufactured by our own unique DNA structure, which determines are individual traits. It’s why you have blue eyes. It’s what you can blame for having your father’s nose. “Now you fry the egg, and that white portion turns into a solid mass, that’s the proteins misfolding on account of the extreme heat. Now imagine on a very micro scale, that you normally have this tiny bit or normal, gelatinous, moving protein. And, then something happens. Not high heat, but other parts of the biochemistry goes wrong, or a toxin is introduced, and suddenly what’s inside yourself is more like that cooked egg white.”
Messer is a pioneer in the field of engineered antibody technologies, and their use towards treating Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease. She has published more than 100 papers on genetics, mechanisms and therapeutics for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, including papers in Nature, Nature Genetics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Molecular Therapy, and major neuroscience journals.
Last September, Messer was a speaker at the World’s Parkinson’s Congress in Portland, Or. “There were 4,000 people affected by Parkinson’s there, in one convention center,” she said. At the Portland convention, Messer said she spoke in front of 1,000 people. Her ability to speak in front of large groups is not a challenge for her. Ask a question about her research, and a confident response immediately follows. Speaking one-on-one with someone afflicted with Huntington’s, she said, bypasses the research and the papers, and goes straight to the heart.
Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s are all neurodegenerative diseases — illnesses the effect the brain, impacting one’s ability to move, talk, and sometimes leading up to mood swings and memory loss. Ultimately, each disease leads to dementia, and death. In many cases, these diseases are passed down genetically. In the case of Huntington’s disease, a 2015 paper published in Neurologic Clinics stated that 10 percent of patients contracted the illness through the outside environment. A person whose mother or father has Parkinson’s disease has a 50/50 chance of developing it as well. Because patients ultimately lose their sense of freedom, and sense of self, the subject matter is scary.
Messer’s research, and those of her peers, is shedding light on the unknown aspects these diseases. Becoming more aware of the root cause, so methods of treatment are created for those who develop symptoms.
“Basically, there’s a concept that is becoming increasingly important,” said Messer. “That the reason our brains breakdown in different ways, in different diseases, is because the proteins that normally keep them healthy, misfold. So, the quality control mechanism that allows everything to be manufactured in an orderly and correct fashion, begins to breakdown — sometimes with aging, sometimes with bad genes, and sometimes with toxic exposures or even when the immune system has gone awry.”
“Approaches that can help to clear this misfolded protein would be one direction, those are more therapeutic. There are some suggestions that we can actually harness the immune system in active ways. I harness it by engineering antibodies, but it is possible, in theory, to harness it to almost do a vaccine approach. If you get some of these bad proteins, you immune system will go, ‘oh, this is almost like an invading virus, we’ll get rid of it.’ And, that is one of the concepts people are working on.”
Stem cell research has grabbed headlines over the past decade. Initially over the morality of the process in recovering stem cells — fetal cells that have yet to decide what to become, whether it be a skin cell, a brain cell, or any other piece of the puzzle that is your body. But, the ability to nudge stem cells into becoming what is needed, has produced far reaching developments in medicine.
“You have to temper the hope with realism,” said Messer. Her research into engineering a person’s immune system to counteract neurodegenerative diseases is “much more futuristic,” she said. “But, the way technology is moving, there is a lot more hope than there was five, ten years ago.”
http://www.spotlightnews.com/thespot/2017/03/03/unraveling-a-misfolded-brain/
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