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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Yerkes

Yerkes researchers find Zika infection soon after birth leads to long-term brain problems

Researchers from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center have shown Zika virus infection soon after birth leads to long-term brain and behavior problems, including persistent socioemotional, cognitive and motor deficits, as well as abnormalities in brain structure and function. This study is one of the first to shed light on potential long-term effects of Zika infection after birth.

“Researchers have shown the devastating damage Zika virus causes to a fetus, but we had questions about what happens to the developing brain of a young child who gets infected by Zika,” says lead researcher Ann Chahroudi, MD, PhD, an affiliate scientist in the Division of Microbiology and Immunology at Yerkes, director of the Center for Childhood Infections and Vaccines (CCIV), Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) and Emory University, and an associate professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Emory University School of Medicine.

“Our pilot study in nonhuman primates provides clues that Zika virus infection during the early postnatal period can have long-lasting impact on how the brain develops and works, and how this scenario has the potential to impact child behavior,” Chahroudi continues.

The study, published online in Nature Communications, followed four infant rhesus monkeys for one year after Zika virus infection at one month of age. Studying a rhesus monkey until the age of 1 translates to the equivalent of 4 to 5 years in human age. Researchers found postnatal Zika virus infections led to Impairments in memory function, significant changes in behavior, including reduced social interactions and increased emotional reactions, and some gross motor deficits. These changes corresponded with structural and functional brain changes the researchers found on MRI scans – findings that indicate long-term neurologic complications.

“Our findings demonstrate neurodevelopmental changes detected at 3 and 6 months of age are persistent,” says first author Jessica Raper, PhD, research assistant professor at Yerkes. (See Science Translational Medicine for an earlier study by members of the current research team.) “This is significant because it gives healthcare providers a better understanding of possible complications of Zika beyond infection during pregnancy and into the first years of life,” she adds.
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Posted on May 27, 2020 by Wayne Drash in Neuro Leave a comment

Federal research funding sparks economic growth

A recent report from The Science Coalition gives numerous examples of how federally funded research at universities has led to innovation, new companies, and the creation of jobs. The Sparking Economic Growth report lists the university research origins of 100 companies, including Google, Genentech, Cisco Systems and iRobot. Four Emory startup companies were highlighted among the success stories: GeoVax, Inc., Pharmasset, Inc., Syntermed, Inc., and Triangle Pharmaceuticals, which was later acquired by Gilead Sciences in California.

Emory President James Wagner wrote a followup editorial in the Atlanta Business Chronicle about the importance of scientific research in Georgia’s universities to the health of our economy.

“Atlanta can be proud that Emory University is a shining example in this report, with four highlighted successful companies that were launched because federally funded research resulted in innovative and life-saving discoveries. These four success stories only scratch the surface as examples of the more than 150 companies and the resulting 5,500 jobs created in Georgia from discoveries at its research universities.

“Since the 1990s, Emory has turned external research funding, the majority from the federal government, into more than $775 million in licensing revenues from drugs, diagnostics, devices and consumer products. This is money infused into the state’s economy that helps create jobs and educational opportunities, saves lives, and leads to more research discoveries for the benefit of all. Emory has launched 47 start-up companies and licensed 27 drugs, medical devices and diagnostics already in the marketplace and 12 more currently in human trials.”

GeoVax, Inc., is developing and testing a promising AIDS vaccine based on research at the Emory Vaccine Center and Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Gilead Sciences (from Triangle Pharmaceuticals) and Pharmasset, Inc. are creating AIDS drugs that are taken by over 90 percent of HIV-infected patients in the United States and many more around the world. Syntermed, Inc. distributes imaging software developed at Emory that helps in the diagnosis of more than four million heart disease patients every year.

Posted on July 12, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Untangling the mysteries of Alzheimer’s disease

Lary Walker, PhD

Consider this: Alzheimer’s is a uniquely human disorder. But why? Why don’t nonhuman primates, such as monkeys, get Alzheimer’s disease. Monkeys form the senile plaques that are identical to the plaques found in humans. So do other animals.

“Yet, despite the fact that nonhuman primates make this protein that we know is very important in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, they don’t develop the full disease,” says Lary Walker, PhD. Walker is an associate professor at Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

“They don’t develop the tangles we associate with Alzheimer’s disease, the neuronal loss, the shrinkage of the brain, and they don’t get demented in the sense that humans do,” says Walker.

When our bodies make a protein, the protein tends to fold into a functional form. But when it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, some proteins misfold, becoming sticky and then combining with one another. In their collective form, the proteins can then form plaques or tangles, the two types of lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

And for some unknown reason, people who have plaques usually go on to form tangles. But people who have tangles don’t always go on to form plaques. No one is sure why. But that’s what researcher Walker wants to find out.

To listen to Walker’s own words about Alzheimer’s disease, access Emory’s new Sound Science podcast.

Posted on June 14, 2010 by admin in Neuro Leave a comment

Quirky little prairie voles hold answers

Larry Young, PhD

So says Larry Young, PhD, chief of the Division of Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychiatric Disorders at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University.

Young, who is world-renowned for his work on the role of neuropeptides in regulating social behavior, uses voles to investigate the neurobiological and genetic mechanisms underlying social behavior. Using the monogamous prairie vole (vs. the promiscuous meadow vole) as a model organism, Young and his research team identified the oxytocin and vasopressin receptors as key mediators of social bonding and attachment. In addition, they are examining the consequences of social bond disruption as a model of social loss-induced depression.

This work has important implications for developing novel treatment strategies for psychiatric disorders associated with social cognitive deficits, including autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.

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Posted on May 18, 2010 by admin in Neuro Leave a comment

NIH director visits Emory, Atlanta Clinical & Translational Science Institute

David Stephens, MD, Jim Wagner, PhD, Earl Lewis, PhD, Francis Collins, MD, PhD

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and chief of staff Dr. Kathy Hudson, paid a daylong visit to Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center, including Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and Morehouse School of Medicine on April 14.

The purpose of Collins’ visit was to view the activities of the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute, one of 46 national CTSAs funded by the NIH through the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR).  Collins also will visit CTSAs at Duke, UNC, and Vanderbilt in the future.

Collins asked that his visit focus on “how CTSAs are enabling science.” It was an opportunity for the ACTSI, a partnership among Emory, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Institute of Technology and others, including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia BIO, Kaiser Permanente, CDC, the Atlanta VA Medical Center and the Grady Health System, to showcase the unique contributions the ACTSI makes to enabling clinical and translational research.

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Posted on April 21, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Paris “Hands Over” to Atlanta for AIDS Vaccine 2010

Eric Hunter, PhD

Eric Hunter, PhD

As the AIDS Vaccine 2009 conference concluded today in Paris with more than 1,000 scientists in attendance, Eric Hunter, PhD, co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, accepted the “hand over” for next year’s international conference in Atlanta.

The Emory CFAR will serve as local Atlanta host of AIDS Vaccine 2010, which takes place next Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, led by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise. The conference will bring scientists, community advocates, funders and policy makers from around the world to Atlanta to hear cutting edge scientific results, exchange new ideas, educate future leaders and engage a diverse group of scientists in the quest for an AIDS vaccine.

A number of Emory scientists were in attendance in Paris at AIDS Vaccine 2009. Hunter was interviewed by several news organizations, including the Lehrer News Hour and Science magazine, about the results of a recently concluded AIDS vaccine trial conducted by the United States and Thailand. The complete results of the trial were released at the meeting and also published online this week by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hunter was among 22 scientists who initially had criticized the trial in a 2004 Science editorial. After seeing the full results and analysis of the trial this week, Hunter commented from the Paris meeting:

“The complete data from the trial indicate that it was modestly effective in preventing HIV-1 infection. However, it will likely be difficult to establish the mechanism by which the vaccine protected participants and additional studies will be needed. This positive result, though, gives a much needed boost to efforts aimed at developing an HIV-1 vaccine and takes the field from the position of perhaps an impossible goal to a possible goal.”

Hunter will chair AIDS Vaccine 2010 in Atlanta, along with co-chairs James Curran, MD, MPH, dean, Rollins School of Public Health; Carlos del Rio, MD, Hubert professor and chair of the Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health; and Harriet Robinson, PhD, senior vice president of research and development, GeoVax and emeritus professor of microbiology and immunology, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University.

Posted on October 22, 2009 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Voles and the neurochemistry of social behavior

A new study has shown that prairie voles may be a useful model in understanding the neurochemistry of social behavior. By influencing early social experience in prairie voles, researchers hope to gain greater insight into what aspects of early social experience drive diversity in adult social behavior.

VolesPrairie voles are small, highly social rodents that often form stable, life-long bonds between mates. In the wild, there is striking diversity in how offspring are reared. Some pups are reared by single-mothers, some by both parents (with the father providing much of the same care as the mother) and some in communal family groups.

Researchers Todd Ahern, a graduate student in the Emory Neuroscience Program, and Larry Young, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory School of Medicine, compared pups raised by single mothers (SM) to pups raised by both parents (BP) to determine the effects of these types of early social environments on adult social behavior.

The study showed SM- and BP-reared animals experienced different levels of care during the neonatal period and that these differences significantly influenced bonding social behaviors in adulthood. Pups raised by single mothers were slower to make life-long partnerships, and they showed less interest in nurturing pups in their communal families.

Researchers also found differences in the oxytocin system. Oxytocin is best known for its roles in maternal labor and suckling, but, more recently, it has been tied to prosocial behavior, such as bonding, trust and social awareness. Very simply, altering their early social experience influenced adult bonding.

Further studies will look at the altered oxytocin levels in the brain to determine how these hormonal changes affect relationships.

Posted on September 14, 2009 by admin in Neuro 1 Comment