Charlottesville, VA — Ageing vessels connecting the brain and the immune system play critical roles in both Alzheimer’s disease and the decline in cognitive ability that comes with time, new research reveals.
By improving the function of the lymphatic vessels, scientists at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have dramatically enhanced aged mice’s ability to learn and improved their memories. The work may provide doctors an entirely new path to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease, age-related memory loss and other neurodegenerative diseases.
The researchers have published their findings in the journal Nature. Antoine Louveau, who was the first author on the original discovery of the meningeal lymphatics, and Da Mesquita are the first authors of the paper. The team also included Andrea Vaccari, Igor Smirnov, R. Chase Cornelison, Kathryn M. Kingsmore, Christian Contarino, Suna Onengut-Gumuscu, Emily Farber, Daniel Raper, Kenneth E. Viar, Romie D. Powell, Wendy Baker, Nisha Dabhi, Robin Bai, Rui Cao, Song Hu, Stephen S. Rich, Jennifer M. Munson, M. Beatriz Lopes, Christopher C. Overall and Scott T. Acton.
Kipnis emphasized the collaborative nature of the work, noting the importance of many different areas of expertise. For example, the project included big data processing by Christopher Overall from the Department of Neuroscience/BIG centre and contributions from Acton and Vaccari from the Virginia Image and Video Analysis Laboratory at UVA. Other important contributions came from UVA’s Center for Public Health Genomics, the Department of Neurosurgery and UVA’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. (The Department of Biomedical Engineering itself is a joint collaboration of UVA’s School of Medicine and School of Engineering.) “It’s another exemplification of how today research cannot be done in one place and one lab,” Kipnis said.
Publication: Functional aspects of meningeal lymphatics in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease. Sandro Da Mesquita et al. Nature (2018): Click here to view.