Rudy's lab at MGH/Harvard has recently developed an evolved "AD in a dish" model, which includes inflammation and the ability to see it spread. Professor Tanzi is the co-founding scientist and Chief Scientific Adviser at Prana Biotechnology. Dr Tanzi is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital. Apologies if already posted.

Microfluidic system incorporates neuroinflammation into 'Alzheimer's in a dish' model

System fully replicates Alzheimer's pathology, including neural cell death

Date:

July 30, 2018

Source:

Massachusetts General Hospital

Summary:

Building on their development of the first culture system to replicate fully the pathology behind Alzheimer's disease, a research team has now produced a system that includes neuroinflammation, the key biological response that leads to the death of brain cells.

Share:

     

FULL STORY

Six days after activated microglia (red) were added to the outer chamber of the new microfluidic device, the inflammatory cells migrate through channels into the inner chamber, containing cultured neurons and astrocytes (green) with gene variants associated with familial Alzheimer's disease. Upon arrival in the inner chamber, the microglia directly attack neurons and raise levels of key inflammatory factors.

Credit: Joseph Park, Ph.D., Doo Yeon Kim, Ph.D., Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., and Hansang Cho, Ph.D.; Genetics and Aging Research Unit, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease

Building on their development of the first culture system to replicate fully the pathology behind Alzheimer's disease, a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team has now produced a system that includes neuroinflammation, the key biological response that leads to the death of brain cells. The investigators describe their system, which incorporates the glial cells that that not only surround and support neurons but also provide some immune system functions, in a paper published in Nature Neuroscience.