Something smells … overcooked. Is it your brain?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
As we age, brain inflammation drives diseases like Alzheimer’s, burning a hole in our memory. But could the cure be right under our noses?
Leelavathi Madhu and team at Texas A&M University are putting out the flames! They packaged powerful genetic cargo called microRNAs into tiny sacs, and delivered them by nose spray. These will reprogram the brain’s immune cells to calm down and prevent irreparable damage.
In aged mice, just two doses prevented recognition and object-location memory loss. Unforgettable!
Hinting that one day, Alzheimer’s prevention might be as simple as a sniff away.
Reference: Madhu, L. N., Kodali, M., Upadhya, R., Rao, S., Somayaji, Y., Attaluri, S., Shuai, B., Kirmani, M., Gupta, S., Maness, N., Rao, X., Cai, J. J., & Shetty, A. K. (2024). Extracellular vesicles from human-induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural stem cells alleviate proinflammatory cascades within disease-associated microglia in Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Extracellular Vesicles, 13, e12519. https://doi.org/10.1002/jev2.12519