Latest Catecholamines Stories

Omeros and The Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center have entered into a collaboration to evaluate a novel target, proprietary to Omeros, for the treatment of movement disorders. Under the collaboration, Omeros and The Parkinson's Institute will conduct laboratory studies of one or more compounds that block Omeros's proprietary target in a widely used and highly predictive model for the symptomatic treatment of Parkinson's disease. The collaboration is based on Omeros's discovery and...

Findings may help explain how sleep-deprived people stay alertJust one night without sleep can increase the amount of the chemical dopamine in the human brain, according to new imaging research in the August 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Because drugs that increase dopamine, like amphetamines, promote wakefulness, the findings offer a potential mechanism explaining how the brain helps people stay awake despite the urge to sleep. However, the study also shows that the increase in...

Bayer has discontinued development of Spheramine due to a failed Phase IIb trial. Spheramine is a cell-based therapy in which human retinal cells are injected into the brain, producing levodopa, which is then converted to dopamine. While this is disappointing for the development of a cell-based therapy for Parkinson's disease, a number of gene therapies in development offer hope for sufferers. Titan Pharmaceuticals, Bayer's partner in the development of the Parkinson's disease cell-based...

The human brainstem, the most primitive area of our brains, has been notoriously difficult to image because of its small size. Now researchers have devised a new experimental technique that produces some of the best functional images ever taken of the human brainstem. The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brainstem activity in dehydrated humans. The reported their results in Feb. 28 edition of the journal Science. The subjects were participating...

New research on mice shows the brain processes aggressive behavior as it does other rewards. Mice sought violence, in fact, picking fights for no apparent reason other than the rewarding feeling. The mouse brain is thought to be analogous to the human brain in this study, which could shed light on our fascination with brutal sports as well as our own penchant for the classic bar brawl. In fact, the researcher say, humans seem to crave violence just like they do sex, food or...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - New research from Vanderbilt University shows for the first time that the brain processes aggression as a reward - much like sex, food and drugs - offering insights into our propensity to fight and our fascination with violent sports like boxing and football.The research will be published online the week of Jan. 14 by the journal Psychopharmacology."Aggression occurs among virtually all vertebrates and is necessary to get and keep important resources such as mates,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medical researchers are investigating suspicions that drugs prescribed to treat Parkinson's disease could turn patients into compulsive gamblers, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration have found a strong association between pathological gambling and the drugs, which boost the level of dopamine in the brain, according to the newspaper. Dopamine, a chemical naturally produced in the human body, plays a key role in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Medical researchers are investigating suspicions that drugs prescribed to treat Parkinson's disease could turn patients into compulsive gamblers, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration have found a strong association between pathological gambling and the drugs, which boost the level of dopamine in the brain, according to the newspaper.Dopamine, a chemical naturally produced in the human body, plays a key role in the way the...

Signs of heart failure may be in the blood. Cardiac researchers at Jefferson Medical College have found an enzyme in the blood that could be a potential marker for heart failure. A team of scientists led by Walter Koch, Ph.D., director of the Center for Translational Medicine in the Department of Medicine in Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, previously showed that an enzyme called GRK2 or beta-adrenergic kinase (ßARK1) is critically important in...

BOSTON - Researchers from Harvard Medical School have found a molecule that is unexpectedly involved in dopamine signaling, and in a manner that supports the potential of dopamine as an alternative target for treating depression. The results provide evidence that there is a molecular link between impaired dopamine signaling and depression, which affects 16 percent of the adult population in the United States. The research appears in the July 29 issue of Cell. Li-Huei Tsai, Harvard Medical...