Last Halloween, I successfully created the phenotype of a dinosaur with my godson

Thanks David!

I’ll be presenting this at #ADPD next week. If you’re there please say hi!

Big thanks to my amazing co-authors, particularly the colleagues at the University of São Paulo, our brain bank donors and their families, and the funding partners who made this work possible.

One consequence of this is that by expressing a receptor the neurons can use to take in cholesterol, it makes them more susceptible to toxic amyloid beta oligomers.

One that stood out was that there are massive differences in cholesterol homeostatic pathways, with the vulnerable locus coeruleus showing signs that its neurons are super “hungry” for cholesterol.

By looking at the average gene expression differences between these regions within individuals who lack significant degeneration, we found some interesting features.

In this study, we compared two brainstem regions that have remarkably similar anatomical features but are distinct in their vulnerability to AD - the locus coeruleus and the substantia nigra.

An overlooked phenomenon in therapeutic development is that certain neurons are way more likely to die than others - they are selectively vulnerable. Designing a therapy towards these vulnerable neurons and, critically, the pathways making them vulnerable, will be key for successful therapeutics.

Ah I thought that was just me! ClinVar was being weird too.

We seek a mix of contributions focused on different neuromodulatory systems in different diseases - both reviews and primary research papers. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or proposals.

Submission deadline: August 30, 2025

alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/...

I started to make one for neurodegenerative disease neuropathologists but couldn’t find enough of us on here yet!!