Toxic brain cells may drive many neurodegenerative disorders, study finds
A study describing the findings will be published online Jan. 18 in Nature . "We've learned astrocytes aren't always the good guys," said the study's senior author , Ben Barres, MD, PhD, professor of neurobiology, of developmental biology and of neurology and neurological sciences. "An aberrant version of them turns up in suspicious abundance in all the wrong places in brain-tissue samples from patients with brain injuries and major neurological disorders from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to multiple sclerosis. The implications for treating these diseases are profound." Barres, who has spent three decades focusing on brain cells that aren't nerve cells, called the findings "the most important discovery my lab has ever made." Stanford postdoctoral scholar Shane Liddelow, PhD, is the study's lead author. Up to now, the pharmaceutical industry has mostly targeted nerve cells, also known as neurons, Barres said. But a broad...