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International scientific collaboration between IMBB Researchers and Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the United States and the University of Oslo, in Norway uncovers the novel role of mitophagy in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease.
The findings of the study, published today in the premier international scientific journal Nature Neuroscience, reveal a novel molecular mechanism underlying the beneficial effects of mitophagy, the cellular process of mitochondria recycling, against the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. IMBB Researchers, Dr. Konstantinos Palikaras and Dr. Nektarios Tavernarakis (Professor at the Medical School, University of Crete, and Chairman of the Board at FORTH) in collaboration with the team of Prof. Vilhem Bohr at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health, (NIH) in Baltimore, USA, together with Dr. Evandro Fang at the University of Oslo and the Akershus University Hospital, Lørenskog, Norway, demonstrated that mitophagy is impaired inAlzheimer’s disease and that its pharmacological stimulation reverses the disease’s pathological features, including cognitive deficits.
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FORTH and COLUMBIA Researchers pinpoint the cells that control the brain's memory flow
The laboratories of Dr. Attila Losonczy (http://www.losonczylab.org/) at Columbia University in New York and Dr.Yiota Poirazi (www.dendrites.gr) at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of FORTH, joined forces in order to explain how neurons flexibly lay down or recall memories. The study, which was recently published in the scientific journal Neuron, is the first to provide visual evidence that a particular type of neurons –the so called VIP interneurons- makes this flexibility possible.
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