Publications

According to the "amyloid hypothesis", the amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptide is the toxic intermediate driving Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Recent evidence suggests that the low density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 (LRP1) transcytoses Abeta out of the brain across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). To provide genetic evidence for LRP1-mediated transcytosis of Abeta across the BBB we analyzed Abeta transcytosis across primary mouse ...

Introduction: Molecular imaging is a fast developing field and there is a growing need for specific imaging tracers in the clinic. Camelid single-domain antibody-fragments (sdAbs) recently emerged as a new class of molecular imaging tracers. Areas covered: We review the importance of molecular imaging in the clinic and the use of camelid sdAbs as in vivo molecular imaging tracers. Interest in imaging tracers based on antibody fragments or ...

Abstract: Background: The clinical treatment of various types of pain relies upon the use of opioid analgesics. However most of them produce, in addition to the analgesic effect, several side effects such as the development of dependence and addiction as well as sedation, dysphoria, and constipation. One solution to these problems are chimeric compounds in which the opioid pharmacophore is hybridized with another type of compound to incease ...

INTRODUCTION: Hyperintense acute reperfusion marker (HARM) is an indicator of early disruption of the blood-brain-barrier. Our aim was to investigate the incidence of HARM in patients with a diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) - fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) mismatch and determine the association between this marker and hemorrhagic complications as well as clinical outcome. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We included patients from the Efficacy ...

Stress negatively affects cognitive performance. Probiotics remediate somatic and behavioral stress responses, hypothetically by acting on the gut microbiota. Here, in exploratory analyses, we assessed gut microbial alterations after 28-days supplementation of multi-strain probiotics (EcologicBarrier consisting of Lactobacilli, Lactococci, and Bifidobacteria in healthy, female subjects (probiotics group n = 27, placebo group n = 29). In an ...

Maintenance of the endothelial blood-brain-barrier (BBB) through Wnt/β-catenin signalling is essential for neuronal function. The cells however, providing Wnt growth factors at the adult neurovascular unit (NVU) are poorly explored. Here we show by conditionally knocking out the evenness interrupted (Evi) gene in astrocytes (EviΔAC) that astrocytic Wnt release is crucial for BBB and NVU integrity. EviΔAC mice developed brain oedema and increased ...

Neuroinflammation is defined as the development of an inflammatory response in the central nervous system (CNS) upon trauma or disease. The post-insult neuroinflammatory environment is generally colonized by two myeloid cell populations: endogenous parenchymal microglia and blood-derived monocytes that infiltrate the CNS in response to a compromised blood-brain-barrier. Both these cell populations are characterized by multiple functional states ...

Historically, in Alzheimer's disease research, a lot of attention has been paid to the development of highly selective fluorophores for beta amyloid plaques. With a shift in the understanding of the disease and the importance of a network of cross-talk interactions, the development of small-molecule fluorescent dyes with high selectivity for (hyperphosphorylated) tau protein aggregates in neurofibrillary tangles has been gaining increasing ...

The present study explores the potential of 10-day-old zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a predictive blood-brain-barrier model using a set of 7 pharmaceutical agents. For this purpose, zebrafish were incubated with each of these 7 drugs separately via the route of immersion and the concentration reaching the brain was determined by applying a brain extraction procedure allowing isolation of the intact brain from the head of the zebrafish larvae. ...