Invention of "Alzheimer's in a Dish"

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I found this article in Smithsonian Magazine very interesting. I was reading this while on a flight, and I felt like running up and down the aisle with excitement exclaiming "They did it! Alzheimer's in a dish!" But I stopped short of getting up because, you know, that sort of thing is frowned upon. Especially on an airplane. 

To recap the article, Rudolph Tanzi, director of the genetics and aging research unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, along with scientist Doo Yeon Kim, have successfully replicated "Alzheimer's in a dish".  Basically, they have are able to grow colonies of "genetically manipulated human brain cells that grow in three dimensions in a gooey gel" (Angier, 2015, p. 80). The hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease, toxic build-up of plaques and tangles, are grown in laboratory petri dishes to be further tested against thousands of treatments that may prevent or stop the progression of the disease.

According to "Alz.org Research Center" (2016), 

  • "Plaques, microscopic clumps of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid
  • Tangles, twisted microscopic strands of the protein tau" (Hallmark changes of Alzheimer's).

The ability to recapitulate (repeat the stages of development) Alzheimer's disease pathology may serve to further develop cell models to study pathology in other neurodegenerative disorders (Choi, et al. (2014). Reading this article helps to keep my hopes up for further breakthroughs in treatment. The future results of this new development may come too late to help my own Mom or the millions (more than 5 million) of people living with Alzheimer's today. However, I must continue to have hope for my generation and generations to follow that a cure will be found. 

 References:

Alz.org research center. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.alz.org/research/science/alzheimers_research.asp

Angier, N. (2015, December). Memory Keepers. Smithsonian, 46(8), 78-83.

Choi, et al. (2014, November). A three-dimensional human neural cell culture model of Alzheimer's disease. Nature, 515(7526), 274-278. doi:10.1038/nature13800

Read more:

Two Brains at the Forefront of the Fight Against Alzheimer's

Alzheimer's-in-a-Dish: New Tool for Drug Discovery