How to Boost Nerve Growth in the Brain

Calendar February 17, 2023 | Posted by admin

Researchers from The University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia have discovered the active compound from an edible mushroom that boosts nerve growth and enhances memory. Professor Frederic Meunier from the Queensland Brain Institute said the team had identified new active compounds from the mushroom, Hericium erinaceus.

“Extracts from these so-called ‘lion’s mane’ mushrooms have been used in traditional medicine in Asian countries for centuries, but we wanted to scientifically determine their potential effect on brain cells,” Professor Meunier said. “Pre-clinical testing found the lion’s mane mushroom had a significant impact on the growth of brain cells and improving memory. “Laboratory tests measured the neurotrophic effects of compounds isolated from Hericium erinaceus on cultured brain cells, and surprisingly we found that the active compounds promote neuron projections, extending and connecting to other neurons. “Using super-resolution microscopy, we found the mushroom extract and its active components largely increase the size of growth cones, which are particularly important for brain cells to sense their environment and establish new connections with other neurons in the brain.”

Co-author, UQ’s Dr Ramon Martinez-Marmol said the discovery had applications that could treat and protect against neurodegenerative cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. “Our idea was to identify bioactive compounds from natural sources that could reach the brain and regulate the growth of neurons, resulting in improved memory formation,” Dr Martinez-Marmol said.

Dr Dae Hee Lee from CNGBio Co, which has supported and collaborated on the research project, said the properties of lion’s mane mushrooms had been used to treat ailments and maintain health in traditional Chinese medicine since antiquity. “This important research is unravelling the molecular mechanism of lion’s mane mushroom compounds and their effects on brain function, particularly memory,” Dr Lee said.

The study was published in the Journal of Neurochemistry.

Source: https://www.uq.edu.au/

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Ultrasound Therapy for Alzheimer’s

Calendar June 23, 2021 | Posted by admin

One promising possibility when it comes to treating Alzheimer’s is the idea of using non-invasive ultrasound to take out toxic brain plaques, and a group of researchers in Australia have been at the cutting edge of this technology for a number of years. The scientists’ latest investigations have uncovered some surprising new ways this technique can improve cognition in mouse models of the disease, which they believe could have wider implications for restoring cognition in the elderly.

Led by Professor Jürgen Götz at the University of Queensland, the researchers behind this promising ultrasound therapy published some exciting early results in 2015. Initially, the idea was to use ultrasound in combination with gas-filled microbubbles to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier to allow in drugs that take out toxic amyloid and tau brain plaques that destroy synapses and are seen as key drivers of Alzheimer’s disease.

As it turned out, this technique proved an effective way to clear away the brain plaques without the need for any drugs, with the ultrasound activating microglial cells that could digest the plaques all on their own. The scientists then published a study in 2018 demonstrating how this technique could safely clear the toxic brain plaques and restore memory function in mouse models resembling human brains of 80 to 90 years old, and set their sights on human trials.

As they’ve continued to study this technique in mice, the scientists have continued to uncover new information about its effects on the brain, and how it might boost cognition. In newly published research, the team carried out new experiments on mouse models of brains with age-related deterioration, and found that it brought about yet further unexpected changes.

One of the physiological hallmarks of age-related cognitive decline is a deterioration in a type of signaling between neurons called long-term potentiation (LTP), which is associated with memory. The scientists were able to show that combining ultrasound with the microbubbles fully restored LTP in one region of the hippocampus. More interesting still, the ultrasound proved even more effective without the help of the microbubbles, not only restoring LTP but also improving the spatial learning deficits of the elderly mice by improving synaptic signaling and neurogenesis, among other physiological alterations.

Ultrasound may be a way to not just tackle brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s, but also age-related cognitive decline in the broader population

The team’s ultrasound technique could serve as a two-pronged attack on Alzheimer’s, combining with microbubbles and plaque-busting agents to tackle the condition while simultaneously improving cognition via a separate pathway. And promisingly, the scientists believe the technique may one day prove a viable way to address age-related cognitive decline in the broader population.

“Historically, we have been using ultrasound together with small gas-filled bubbles to open the almost-impenetrable blood-brain barrier and get therapeutics from the bloodstream into the brain,” Professor Götz says. “The entire research team was surprised by the remarkable restoration in cognition. We conclude therapeutic ultrasound is a non-invasive way to enhance cognition in the elderly.”

Source: https://qbi.uq.edu.au/

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Cannabis Ingredient to kill meningitis and pneumonia

Calendar February 15, 2021 | Posted by admin

Cannabidiol (CBD), the main nonpsychoactive ingredient of the cannabis plant, can kill Gram-positive bacteria and, more impressively, Gram-negative bacteria, which excel at antibiotic resistance because they enjoy an extra layer of protection, an outer cell membrane. The ability of CBD to slay Gram-negative bacteria is a new finding, one reported by a team of scientists in Australia. According to the scientists, CBD analogs could constitute the first new class of antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria that has been developed since the 1960s.

The new finding appeared in the journal Communications Biology, in an article titled, “The antimicrobial potential of cannabidiol.” According to this article, CBD not only killed Gram-positive bacteria such as highly resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Clostridioides difficile, it also showed potency against the Gram-negative bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Neisseria meningitides, Moraxella catarrhalis, and Legionella pneumophila. These Gram-negative bacteria are responsible for sexually transmitted gonorrhea, life-threatening meningitis, airway infections (such as bronchitis and pneumonia), and Legionnaires’ disease, respectively.

“Our results demonstrate that cannabidiol has excellent activity against biofilms, little propensity to induce resistance, and topical in vivo efficacy,” the authors of the article wrote. “Multiple mode-of-action studies point to membrane disruption as cannabidiol’s primary mechanism.”

The authors included scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia and Botanix Pharmaceuticals. At the University of Queensland’s Centre for Superbug Solutions, scientists led by associate professor Mark Blaskovich, PhD, mimicked a two-week patient treatment in laboratory models to see how fast the bacteria mutated to try to outwit CBD’s killing power.

“Cannabidiol showed a low tendency to cause resistance in bacteria even when we sped up potential development by increasing concentrations of the antibiotic during ‘treatment,’” said Blaskovich, the corresponding author of the article in Communications Biology. “We think that cannabidiol kills bacteria by bursting their outer cell membranes, but we don’t know yet exactly how it does that, and we need to do further research.”

Source: https://www.genengnews.com/

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