Protein Form Linked to Huntington’s Disease

[TECH NEWS]

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, have discovered how a form of the protein linked to Huntington’s disease influences the timing and severity of its symptoms, offering new avenues for treating not only this disease, but also a variety of similar conditions. In a paper being published Oct. 31 in Nature Chemical Biology, the laboratory of Gladstone Senior Investigator Steven Finkbeiner, MD, PhD, singles out one form of a misfolded protein in neurons that best predicts whether the neuron will die. Neuronal death is key to the development of Huntington’s symptoms—including erratic behavior, memory loss and involuntary muscle movement. This research underscores the value of the cross-disciplinary work done at Gladstone while revealing techniques that scientists anywhere can apply to conditions involving misfolded proteins, such as Alzheimer’s disease and type 1 diabetes. “Effective treatments for diseases such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s have been slow to develop,” said Dr. Finkbeiner. “We hope that our newfound understanding of precisely which misfolded proteins contribute to disease symptoms will speed up drug development for sufferers.”

 Oct 31, 2011, Anne Holden, Gladstone Institutes