The research team led by Nobel Laureates May-Britt and Edvard Moser at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) is already known for their discovery of the brain’s sense of place. Now they have shown that the brain also weaves a tapestry of time: The brain segments and organizes events into experiences, placing unique bookmarks on them so that our lives don’t become a blurry stream, but rather a series of meaningful moments and memories we can revisit and learn from.

Resarchers in the UK Dementia Research Institute at Cardiff University, UK, have now generated the first large-scale stem cell bank from over 100 individuals Reelected for extremes of AD PRS, which had previously been determined by genome sequencing. The results of the work are published today in Stem Cell Reports. About two thirds of the donors had been diagnosed with AD and had a relatively high PRS while one third were cognitively healthy, age-matched individuals with a low PRS. Blood cells from these individuals were genetically engineered to turn them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are immature cells capable of generating all cell types of the body.

Leveraging CRISPR experiments, a research team has discovered that an enzyme linked to Alzheimer’s disease can also be targeted to prevent lung tumors from metastasizing to the brain. Their experiments in mice reveal a promising new therapeutic target in brain metastasis, which occurs in as many as 40% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Metastases to the brain are very difficult to treat, and almost always correlate with poor prognoses and shorter survival rates in patients with cancer. Although scientists have created targeted treatments for brain metastases, these drugs usually only delay tumor progression for a time before treatment resistance appears. To address the dire need for new therapeutics, Shawn Chafe and colleagues used a genome-wide CRISPR screen to search for pathways that support brain metastasis. They applied the screen to a mouse model, which was implanted with lung cancer cells taken from a patient with NSCLC. Using CRISPR to turn various genes on, they identified the enzyme BACE1 as a driver of lung cancer cell migration and invasion of the brain. Inhibiting or knocking out BACE1 prevented the appearance of metastases in the brain, and the authors found that metastasizing lung cancer cells depended on the enzyme for their growth and self-renewal. Chafe et al. say that their findings support repurposing BACE1 inhibitors designed for Alzheimer’s disease as potential treatments for patients with lung cancer, noting that inhibitors such as verubecestat have already reached phase 3 clinical trials.