A breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease may have been made in Seattle. Researchers at the Allen Institute have discovered an early sign of the disease before the first symptom appears. In this week’s Healthier Together, KIRO 7′s Ranji Sinha spoke to the scientists with professional – and personal – stakes in this work.
Kyle Travaglini is a scientist at the Allen Institute and the work he’s doing on Alzheimer’s has deep personal roots.
“When I was entering college, my grandmother was starting to get a little forgetful she would lose track of where and when – she was,” Travaglini told KIRO 7.
Travaglini says he would often visit his grandmother and as she grew older, her Alzheimer’s grew worse. He decided in Grad school he wanted to find out why she developed and lived with Alzheimer’s until her death.
For nearly a century, researchers have focused on plaques and tangles that build up in our brains that are connected to Alzheimer’s. It’s led to therapies but no cure.
Travaglini and fellow researcher Mariano Gabitto analyzed cellular data in brains that had Alzheimer’s and realized they had made a fairly significant discovery.
“There’s a particular kind of neuron, inhibitory neuron, a neuron that tells cells to be quiet and silences them that is lost,” Travaglini said.
The neuron or nerve cell he described often regulates the workings of other brain cells and thus regulates brain activity. The two scientists said the loss of these cells was happening early in the cycle of the disease, well before symptoms started appearing.
Gabitto says the discovery is in its early stages and more work needs to be done, but the team is optimistic.
“The more data we get, we’re going to be able to better pinpoint the effects,” he told KIRO 7.
Gabitto also says looking at brain activity and sections of the brain and looking at cellular levels also helped them understand Alzheimer’s in another way.
“The data shows us a trajectory of the disease,” he said.
Millions are impacted by Alzheimer’s worldwide, so the National Institutes of Health has been funding research to find a cure. The Allen Institute’s brain mapping is helping that effort.
Gabitto and Travaglini only looked at 84 brains, but now that they know what to look for. The researchers are going to see if cells are dying off in more brains with Alzheimer’s using ones donated to the University of Washington’s Alzheimer’s Research Center. The discovery is too late for Kyle’s grandmother, but he hopes his work could help others.
“It makes me really proud to be able to work on something like that. To honor her memory, I like to think she’d be very proud of that work,” he said.
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