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Brain Ageing Research Laboratory
by CHeBA
This interdisciplinary group was formed to apply state-of-the-art molecular biology techniques to the advancement of research in the areas of normal ageing, Alzheimer’s disease and other agerelated neurodegenerative conditions.
The team consists of neuroscientists, protein and analytical chemists, psychiatrists and bioinformaticians working in Australia and abroad. CHeBA’s Brain Ageing Research Laboratory was a sole recipient of a $1 million research grant from The Yulgilbar Foundation to develop nanoparticles as nanodiagnostics and nanotherapeutics in Alzheimer’s disease. The group utilises human and murine brain cell cultures and postmortem tissue for understanding the brain and the ageing process.
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Our current work is committed to discovering the fundamental causes and possible treatments for agerelated neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, and neurodevelopmental diseases, as well as on genetic and metabolic changes that take place as organisms grow old.
Our cross-disciplinary and integrative approach using clinical samples and animal models will facilitate the detection of dementia-related changes in the preclinical stages and validate the efficacy of targeted novel early interventions for neurocognitive disorders.
The group also has the expertise to culture, propagate, differentiate, engineer and transplant in animal models the neural stem cells from various sources including skinderived neuroprogenitors and human mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow. In addition, we have expertise in the derivation of new human embryonic stem cell lines including their clonal propagation.
Staff
Dr Nady Braidy Group Leader
Professor Perminder
Sachdev Maria Villalva
PhD Students
Chul-Kyu Kim Marina Ulanova Gurjeet Virk
Dr Nady Braidy, Chul-Kyu Kim, Maria Villalva, Gurjeet Virk and Marina Ulanova
Funding Success for New Strategy to Promote Healthy Brain Ageing
In September, Leader of the Brain Ageing Research Laboratory, Dr Nady Braidy, was awarded a National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant to develop a new strategy to improve cognition and quality of life for people living with cognitive impairment and dementia.
The prestigious award will allow Dr Braidy’s team to evaluate the prognostic value of the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) metabolome and therapeutic relevance of novel strategies to raise NAD+ levels for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, while promoting ‘healthy’ brain ageing.
CHeBA Co-Director Professor Perminder Sachdev said Dr Braidy was deserving of an Investigator Grant. “Dr Braidy is an international leader in the biology of ageing and has made seminal contributions in the role of NAD+, one of the most abundant molecules in the cell and critical for the cell’s function.”
“His work has the potential to develop strategies for a long and healthy life without dementia. This investigator grant will give him the support needed to move closer to this goal,” said Professor Sachdev.
Dr Braidy’s research in brain ageing and dementia spans a decade with his influential discovery that the levels of NAD+ declines with age in catabolic tissue including the brain in rats and humans.
Dr Nady Braidy
“The expectation is that in five years, my laboratory will develop the empirical basis for the use of NAD+ to help promote healthy brain ageing and delay, or even reverse dementia,” said Dr Braidy.
Using Quantum Dots to Diagnose and Treat Alzheimer’s Disease
Brain Ageing Research Laboratory researchers and Dr Vipul Agarwal from the School of Chemical Engineering offered renewed insight into ‘Quantum dot’ research in 2021, revealing its promising application in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and therapy.
Lead author of the research, Maria Villalva, said that “Quantum dots are emerging nanomaterials that are making their way into Alzheimer’s disease research and have the potential to be used for early diagnosis as well as treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.”
The review, published in Nanomedicine, examined 34 publications to investigate the potential of Quantum dots to target amyloid plaques in the brain, which can be adapted for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Quantum dots are able to cross the blood-brain barrier; a tightly regulated system of cells that prevents foreign substances from being transported from the blood to the brain, as well as facilitating the entry of essential nutrients. The blood-brain barrier has been shown to act as a physical limitation for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
Ms Villalva says the review also looked at the potential toxicity of Quantum dots; a major obstacle in their progression into clinical Alzheimer’s disease research. The unique properties of Quantum dots, and their versatility to combine to various biomolecules render them a promising diagnostic and therapeutic tool for Alzheimer’s disease.
Leader of the Brain Ageing Research Laboratory and Senior Research Fellow at CHeBA, Dr Nady Braidy, says that further studies are needed to monitor the bloodbrain barrier integrity and to establish a gold standard toxicity measure before Quantum dots are used in clinical medicine.
DOI: 10.2217/nnm-2021-0104
Association Between Plasma Lipids and Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease
Research published in Translational Psychiatry uncovered new insight into the underlying mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, by examining differences between the plasma lipidome of people with Alzheimer’s disease and ‘healthy’ individuals of the same age from CHeBA’s Sydney Memory and Ageing Study.
Senior author and Leader of CHeBA’s Brain Ageing Research Laboratory, Dr Nady Braidy, said that the lack of effective treatments and the potential for prevention highlight the importance of identifying early biomarkers for diagnosis, with blood lipids now emerging as promising identifiers of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Although there have been numerous studies on the association between lipids and the biological pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, few studies have looked at the plasma lipidome. This research looked to determine whether lipid profiles are associated with genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
The benefit of lipidomics in biomarker research is that it simultaneously identifies and quantifies hundreds of lipids, acting as a powerful tool for mapping global biochemical changes in disease and treatment. The study also highlighted that genes related to Alzheimer’s disease play a role in influencing lipids that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease, reinforcing the consequence of physiological factors - such as inflammation - on brain ageing.
Lead author Dr Yue Liu, who recently completed his PhD at CHeBA
Co-Director of CHeBA and co-author Professor Perminder Sachdev said “quantifying these plasma lipids using mass spectrometry provides renewed insight in the underlying mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and directs us to additional drug targets and benefits in the clinic.
DOI: 10.1038/s41398-021-01362-2
