Month: February 2014

A new University of British Columbia study identifies an important molecular change that occurs in the brain when we learn and remember. Published this month in Nature Neuroscience, the research shows that learning stimulates our brain cells in a manner that causes a small fatty acid to attach to delta-catenin, a protein in the brain.…

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A new technique that targets proteins that cause disease and destroys “bad apples” in the cell has been developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Brain Research Centre, part of Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. The findings, published this month in Nature Neuroscience, has important implications for a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer’s,…

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A study led by University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute researchers has revealed how the fatal neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is transmitted from cell to cell, and suggests the spread of the disease could be blocked. “This work identifies an important piece of…

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There are usually three main tools for fighting brain cancer: surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. But for patients with ependymoma, a type of childhood brain tumour most common in babies, despite many clinical trials none of the standard chemotherapy medicines have been shown to help. While treatments for many other childhood cancers have changed and improved…

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More detailed scans could lead to better diagnosis and treatments Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an unpredictable and debilitating neurodegenerative disease that affects an estimated 100,000 Canadians. Typically, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is used to confirm diagnosis, but current techniques are limited in their ability to detect subtle differences in tissue damage.

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