Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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VMAT2

More pieces in Parkinson’s puzzle: VMAT2 and SV2C

The drug target VMAT2 has appeared in biomedical news lately because of a pair of FDA approvals. One medicine treats the iatrogenic movement disorder tardive dyskinesia, the first approved to do so, and the other is for symptoms of Huntington’s disease.

Gary Miller, PhD

When Emory folks see VMAT2, they should think of two things: the neurotransmitter dopamine, and Parkinson’s research conducted by Gary Miller and his colleagues. They have made a case that activators of VMAT2 would be beneficial in Parkinson’s, but the drugs in the news were inhibitors, and presumably would make Parkinson’s worse.

VMAT2 (vesicular monoamine transporter 2) is responsible for transporting dopamine into synaptic vesicles, tiny packages for delivery. As Miller’s lab has shown, mice deficient in VMAT2 can be a model for the non-motor and motor aspects of Parkinson’s. In these mice, not only are certain nervous system functions impaired, but the dopamine packaging problem inflicts damage on the neurons.

Miller’s more recent work on a related molecule called SV2C is puzzling, but intriguing. The gene encoding SV2C had attracted attention because of its connection to the striking ability of cigarette smoking to reduce Parkinson’s risk, possibly mediated by nicotine’s effect on dopamine in the brain.

I say puzzling because SV2C’s role in brain cells can’t be described as easily as VMAT2’s. Read more

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment

Parkinson’s drug discovery: visit the dopamine container store

In a recent PNAS paper, Gary Miller and colleagues at Rollins School of Public Health outline a potential therapeutic approach to Parkinson’s disease that I’m going to call the Container Store approach.

If you have a mess in your kitchen or basement workshop, you might need more or better containers to hold your tools. Analogously, problems in Parkinson’s disease can be traced back to a lack of effective containers for the brain communication chemical dopamine.

Read more

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Neuro Leave a comment