Wednesday, April 2, 2014

A New Perspective to View Alzheimer's

Dr. Alois Alzheimer first described Alzheimer’s disease as a peculiar disease related to memory loss and shrinkage of nerves cells in 1906. Alzheimer’s disease has been recognized for over a century. Yet, cure for this neurodegenerative disease is still waiting for being developed. Since the brain is a very complicated organ, scientists could not study this disease profoundly until the electronic microscope became a common research apparatus after World War II.
Due to the increasing number of Alzheimer’s disease patients were diagnosed, the awareness of Alzheimer’s disease has also been increasing in the United States. Studies and research about Alzheimer’s disease had been going on since then. In 1980s, discoveries of two important proteins were identified as key components of Alzheimer’s disease. Beta-amyloid protein is believed to be the main protein causes plaque formation in Alzheimer’s brains and triggers damage to neurons. And tau protein causes formation of tangles, which degenerates normal neurons into copies of them. However, the first pharmaceutical treatment was not developed until 1993 and it only slows down disease’s symptoms. Fortunately, in 1996, scientists successfully advanced an Alzheimer vaccine in mice. When injecting transgenic mice with beta-amyloid protein, mice show that the vaccine prevents the mice from plague formation.


Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is a lot easier comparing to determine the causes of the disease. Because of the symptom is memory loss, but have trouble with memory loss does not necessary mean that it is because of Alzheimer’s. Depression or drug abuses can both lead to memory loss. Therefore, we need a new mean to study this disease more in depth.
According to ScienceDaily, researchers at Lancaster University had invented a new imaging tool—Ultrasonic Force Microscopy (UFM), which uses a vibrating scanner to show a better quality and high contrast nanometer scale resolution image. This apparatus is better than electronic microscopy, which can only gives the resolution but not the contrast, and optical microscopy, which does not provide enough resolution. With the use of UFM, scientists now can review the causes of Alzheimer’s disease with contrast on a nanometer scale.  Hoping in a few years, scientists can develop the Alzheimer’s vaccine for human use with the help of UFM.

Posted by Yim Hui

6 comments:

  1. Interesting blog! I believe that Alzheimer's is a very hard disease to control and diagnose it would be fantastic to be able and find a cure for it. Do you think the cure could be in the form of a vaccine or more of correcting our bodies to stop creating the link to the disease and memory loss?

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  2. Thank you Alex. There is a human vaccine for Alzheimer's today, and it is mainly for stimulating patients' own brain defense mechanism. With the help of newly invented Ultrasonic Force Microscopy, we are hoping scientists can modify the vaccine according to observed high resolution images of the neuron cells. So for now, the future cure for Alzheimer's disease will more likely to be in a form of modified vaccine.

    -Yim Hui

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  3. It seems like this new machine is mostly for research use in coordination with the vaccine. Is is possible that the UMF could be used an Alzheimer's preventative measure to scan patients who are at risk and determine if there are any tau protein aggregations?

    -NB

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    1. UMF now could give researchers clearer images of early stages of Alzheimer's. It is still not yet ready to be a preventative measure. However, with better resolution of images, researchers can possibly find out early signs of beta-amyloid or tau proteins.

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  4. this was very interesting blog to read, it seems as if this new Ultrasonic Force Microscopy imaging tool could lead to advancements in the near future. Do you know if it being used in a lot of research facilities or doctor offices yet or is it still in it's early stages?
    posted by kristen whitehead

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    1. For Alzheimer's disease or other dementia disorders, UFM is still in early stages for brain cells imaging. But UFM can definitely speed up the process of advancements.

      Post by Yim Hui

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