Tuesday, April 29, 2014

A new look on Neurodegenerative processes


            The idea of glaucoma having a neurodegenerative component (similar to other neurodegenerative disorders) as one of its causes is a fairly new one. It’s also an idea that gives a large population to be able to take a look at in terms of experimentation with new drugs and potential mechanisms of action. In his talk and paper, Dr. Calkins regarded glaucoma as “a neurodegenerative disease” which could introduce “neuroprotective strategies …to be an efficacious means to slow or even stop degenerative progression entirely.” Since glaucoma shares many of the common neurodegenerative elements seen in other neurodegenerative disorder like Parkinsons or Alzheimers, if the targets for neuroprotection that Dr. Calkins is researching are found to be effective, then his research will open doors for the possible cure or slowing down of very harmful neurodegenerative diseases.  This is what I found to be the most intriguing of Dr. Calkins talk! The idea that glaucoma’s neurodegeneration process could be similar to other neurodegenerative diseases could help us create links between certain frequent neurodegenerative diseases and lead to research on that topic as well.  I’d like to connect Dr. Calkins talk to an article by one of our LUC professors, Dr. Jessica Brann. Dr. Brann explores the potential for “neuronal replacement-associated proliferation” to continue in the aged population of mice and has found that it indeed does in one of her published articles (cited below). Although Dr. Brann’s research is not very similar to Dr. Calkins’ research in that it’s not really looking into effects of drugs on the neural pathways, it does show that there is potential for neurodegenerative repair within the nervous system which is also what Dr. Calkins pointed out in his talk that I find rather fascinating because there could be even more similarities between different neural pathways than we think! This could lead to a new method of combating disease and studying neuroscience!


Sincerely,
Nida Ahmad

 

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