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Headlines 9 The team’s latest neurogenesis study builds on an impressive body of work, much of which has been funded by the Neurological Foundation. As with all complex research studies, collaboration is crucial, and acknowledgement is given to all those collaborators involved in undertaking these studies. Under the microscope: The causes of Alzheimer’s disease Alongside this ground-breaking research into treatments, Dr Shane Ohline has been leading an exciting project looking at the causes of Alzheimer’s disease. The Neurological Foundation has funded this work, and the teamwere also awarded a Health Research Council Project grant in 2022 for more than $1million. Along with Masters student, Ruben Vergara Silva, and Associate Professor Pete Jones at Otago, Dr Ohline is investigating if Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a faulty ion channel (the ryanodine receptor) in neurons. This channel is responsible for calcium release from stores inside cells. This research is the first in the world to show that this channel groups together to form clusters in neurons, but these clusters are different in a model of Alzheimer’s disease. Changes in clusters are known to lead to cellular dysfunction in other tissues, so could explain why neuronal function is impaired in Alzheimer’s disease. To do this, the researchers used a very high-resolution microscope to identify individual clusters (in gold in the photo opposite). “If we can find additional means of staving off the cognitive and physical decline through therapies addressing this mechanism, then the onset of Alzheimer’s may be pushed so far back as to be much less consequential to our quality of life during ageing,” Dr Ohline says. Professor Cliff Abraham was the founding Director of the Brain Health Research Centre at the University of Otago. He has a long-standing research interest in the neural mechanisms of memory in normal and diseased conditions. He has received grants from the Neurological Foundation for memory research since 1998. Associate Professor Stephanie Hughes leads a lab developing tools and gene therapy vectors for Batten, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease at the Brain Health Research Centre, for which she is the current Director. Dr Shane Ohline is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of Otago, and is interested in brain neurogenesis and the role of abnormally functioning calcium channels in Alzheimer's disease. Together, they have been investigating brain mechanisms for preventing or repairing cell damage caused by brain injury or disease. From left: Dr Shane Ohline, Associate Professor Stephanie Hughes, and Professor Cliff Abraham. HEADLINES DIGITAL EVENT Neurogenesis, Memory and Alzheimer's Tuesday October 4 Professor Cliff Abraham, Dr Shane Ohline and Professor Stephanie Hughes will speak in more detail about their research at this special online event. It is free to register. Details are on our website neurological.org.nz An image of neurons taken by the powerful microscope used in Dr Ohline’s research. The blue shows individual neurons, and the purple shows extensions that come off the cell body. The gold spots are individual ryanodine clusters. The scale bar on the right is 5 µ m (micrometres).