12 documents found, page 1 of 2

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3: from pathogenesis to promising therapeutics

Funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Centro 2020 Regional Operational Program; through the COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation, and Portuguese national funds via FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under the projects: UIDB/04539/2020, UIDP/04539/2020, LA/P/0058/2020, ViraVector (CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-022095), Neurodiet (JPND/...

Molecular therapy for polyQ disorders: from bench to clinical trials

Polyglutamine (polyQ) disorders are monogenic neurodegenerative disorders. Currently, no therapies are available for this complex group of disorders. Here, we aim to provide an overview of recent promising preclinical studies and the ongoing clinical trials focusing on molecular therapies for polyQ disorders.; This work was funded by the ERDF through the Regional Operational Program Center 2020, Competitiveness...

A new protocol for whole-brain biodistribution analysis of AAVs by tissue clear...

Recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) has become one of the most promising gene delivery systems for both in vitro and in vivo applications. However, a key challenge is the lack of suitable imaging technologies to evaluate delivery, biodistribution and tropism of rAAVs and efficiently monitor disease amelioration promoted by AAV-based therapies at a whole-organ level with single-cell resolution. Therefore, ...

ULK overexpression mitigates motor deficits and neuropathology in mouse models ...

Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder clinically characterized by prominent ataxia. It is caused by an expansion of a CAG trinucleotide in ATXN3, translating into an expanded polyglutamine (polyQ) tract in the ATXN3 protein, that becomes prone to misfolding and aggregation. The pathogenesis of the disease has been associated with the dysfunction of several cellular mechanisms, inclu...

The stress granule protein G3BP1 alleviates spinocerebellar ataxia-associated d...

Koppenol et al. show that overexpression of G3BP1 in cell models of SCA2 and SCA3 leads to a reduction in ataxin-2 and ataxin-3 aggregation. G3BP1 lentiviral delivery reduces motor deficits and neuropathology in preclinical models, suggesting that G3BP1 may be a potential therapeutic target for polyQ disorders. Polyglutamine diseases are a group of neurodegenerative disorders caused by an abnormal expansion of ...

Highly specific blood-brain barrier transmigrating single-domain antibodies sel...

A major bottleneck in the successful development of central nervous system (CNS) drugs is the discovery and design of molecules that can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Nano-delivery strategies are a promising approach that take advantage of natural portals of entry into the brain such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) targeting endogenous BBB receptors. However, the main selected mAbs rely on targeting broa...

The autophagy‐enhancing drug carbamazepine improves neuropathology and motor im...

Aims Machado-Joseph disease (MJD), or spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), is the most common autosomal dominantly-inherited ataxia worldwide and is characterised by the accumulation of mutant ataxin-3 (mutATXN3) in different brain regions, leading to neurodegeneration. Currently, there are no available treatments able to block disease progression. In this study, we investigated whether carbamazepine (CBZ) wou...

Trehalose alleviates the phenotype of Machado–Joseph disease mouse models

Trehalose alleviates the phenotype of Machado–Joseph disease mouse models

Machado-Joseph disease (MJD), also known as spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, is the most common of the dominantly inherited ataxias worldwide and is characterized by mutant ataxin-3 aggregation and neuronal degeneration. There is no treatment available to block or delay disease progression. In this work we investigated whether trehalose, a natural occurring disaccharide widely used in food and cosmetic industry, ...

Mesenchymal stromal cells’ therapy for polyglutamine disorders: where do we sta...

Polyglutamine (polyQ) diseases are a group of inherited neurodegenerative disorders caused by the expansion of the cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) repeat. This mutation encodes extended glutamine (Q) tract in the disease protein, resulting in the alteration of its conformation/physiological role and in the formation of toxic fragments/aggregates of the protein. This group of heterogeneous disorders shares common...