Hi

I came across the following earlier today

[www.thespec.com]

Is it as good news as it sounds??

Thanks

Yes it is! I'm reading the journal article today and should have HDSA and Lighthouse updates ready sometime tomorrow.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2011 04:50PM by Marsha.

Thanks Marsha

We were really excited when reading it so great to know that wasn't misplaced! Looking forward to reading your update.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2011 08:59AM by mikeandbec.

Wow!

Truant has been working in this area for years and published a major breakthrough in 2007. In the meantime, Joan Steffan and her colleagues and William Yang and his colleagues have been looking at role of phosphorylation of serines 13 and 16. William Yang took the BAC HD mouse model and engineered it to have permanent phosphorylation of those two serines and the mice never got sick. I covered their research about a year and a half ago. The research of these three separate teams is coming together now and hopefully Truant can find the right inhibitor to test in the mice and in people.

Lots of times people think that a promising piece of research has fallen by the wayside because they haven't heard any news when actually the researchers have been laboring away and moving the research along. That was certainly the case here and I am excited about this because if it DOES pay off, the pay off could be huge.

Marsha or Steve - in this article it mentioned that the longer HD is in a family the earlier the onset on subsequent generations. Is this true?

I have never heard this before. It seems in my husband's family the age of onset is the same regardless of generation.

This particular discovery will be huge though and the sooner the better.

Thanks.

Wow, that sounds good. I'll look forward to reading your version Marsha. I always understand more the 2nd time I read about something plus you have a talent for including exactly enough detail.

It's up on the HDSA site, Sara. I have been really really busy and haven't had time to post on the HD Lighthouse yet.

Shar, it's called anticipation and yes, it's generally true. If you look at the data, there is a bias towards expansion of the CAG repeat, especially when the affected parent is male. Over the generations onset tends to occur earlier and earlier. Remember, this is just a trend and if the CAG repeats in your husband's family tends to stay stable, then you likely won't see anticipation.

Marsha,

In your article on HDSA ( [www.hdsa.org] ) you say

"Drs. Truant and Atwal discovered that some drugs that fall within the class of IKK beta kinase inhibitors restore phosphorylation. The next step is to look at existing drugs in that class to find one which will cross the blood brain barrier, be effective and have a good safety and tolerabiloity profile".

I found an abstract which states "Here we demonstrate that the anti-inflammatory agents aspirin and sodium salicylate specifically inhibit IKK-beta activity in vitro and in vivo". Link: [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

Could this mean that aspirin might have the desired effect?

Thanks,

Eric

EricR, thank you for what you came up with, because i had tried googling kinase inhibitors, and wasn't able to come up with anything that i could understand, because i was wondering what drugs exactly were kinase inhibitors, so your question about aspirin, when i googled aspirin with kinase inhibitors, i was able to come up with a lot that i could understand. Maybe aspirin Is helpful, i do take a daily aspirin. Thanks for your input.

EricR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Marsha,
>
> In your article on HDSA (
> [www.hdsa.org]
> es.html ) you say
>
> "Drs. Truant and Atwal discovered that some drugs
> that fall within the class of IKK beta kinase
> inhibitors restore phosphorylation. The next step
> is to look at existing drugs in that class to find
> one which will cross the blood brain barrier, be
> effective and have a good safety and tolerabiloity
> profile".
>
> I found an abstract which states "Here we
> demonstrate that the anti-inflammatory agents
> aspirin and sodium salicylate specifically inhibit
> IKK-beta activity in vitro and in vivo". Link:
> [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
> stract
>
> Could this mean that aspirin might have the
> desired effect?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric


Hi Marsha,

Could you comment about aspirin?

Thanks,

Eric

Hi Eric, I actually thought I had replied to you after I did my best to research this. Aspirin might be a possibility. It does cross the blood brain barrier. The researchers tried a number of drugs in this class and only some were effective. Crossing the blood brain barrier, bioavailability are both issues in finding a safe and effective drug and then I would imagine that effectiveness would vary based on the actual mechanism by which the drug worked. I think we can expect this line of research to be pursued and hopefully we will hear about a candidate drug soon.