In Huntington's disease, traffic jams in the cell's control center kill brain cells
⇃Moreover, they suggest, laboratory experiments with drugs designed to clear up these cellular "traffic jams" restored normal transport in and out of the nucleus and saved the cells. In the featured article published online on April 5 in Neuron , the researchers also conclude that potential treatments targeting the transport disruptions they identified in Huntington's disease neurons may also work for other neurodegenerative diseases, such as ALS and forms of dementia. Huntington's disease is a relatively rare fatal inherited condition that gradually kills off healthy nerve cells in the brain, leading to loss of language, thinking and reasoning abilities, memory, coordination and movement. Its course and effects are often described as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and ALS rolled into one, making Huntington's disease a rich focus of scientific investigation. "We're trying to get at the heart of the mechanism behind neurodegenera...