A cure for serious diseases? Swiss researchers want to uncover the deepest secrets of the brain
An international research team with Swiss participation has created a cell atlas of the blood vessels in the human brain. This sheds new light on various brain diseases.
14.07.2024, 12:23
SDA
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- A new cell atlas should provide a unique insight into the brain.
- This should also enable research into brain diseases.
An international research team with Swiss participation has created a cell atlas of the blood vessels in the human brain. According to the researchers, this provides a unique, unprecedented insight into the cellular and molecular architecture of the human cerebral vascular system. It therefore sheds new light on various brain diseases.
"In the future, new therapies for certain brain diseases could be found based on this high-resolution cerebrovascular cell atlas," said Thomas Wälchli from the universities and university hospitals in Toronto and Zurich to the Keystone-SDA news agency. The brain researcher is the first author of the study in the journal "Nature", in which the atlas was presented.
"Blood vessels in the brain, for example, play a major role in brain tumors such as glioblastoma - one of the worst types of cancer there is - or in brain metastases," explained Wälchli. The new atlas covers cells, genes and signaling pathways in the human brain. The researchers isolated and analyzed more than 600,000 cells from blood vessels in brains ranging from early brain development to adulthood and across disease stages such as brain tumors and vascular malformations.
Blood vessels grow differently in tumors
The researchers discovered that endothelial cells - the cells that line blood vessels - behave differently at different stages of brain development and in disease. "In an adult, healthy brain, blood vessels practically stop growing," explained Wälchli. In the brains of people with tumors, however, things are different: there, the growth of blood vessels is reactivated, similar to what happens in fetuses. "Although this has already been suspected, it has not yet been demonstrated," said Wälchli.
In the future, this atlas should reveal many more secrets of the brain. However, according to the researcher, it will be years before therapies can be developed from it.