Intranasally-administered deferoxamine mitigates toxicity of 6-OHDA in a rat model of Parkinson׳s disease.

Deferoxamine (DFO) has shown therapeutic promise for the treatment of Parkinson׳s disease (PD) as it has reduced both behavioral and biochemical deficits when injected into the brain of rodent models of PD. Intranasally administered DFO targets the brain directly but non-invasively and has been effective in animal models of stroke and Alzheimer׳s disease. In this study we sought to determine whether intranasal (IN) DFO could be neuroprotective for PD in a rat model. PD was induced with a unilateral injection of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) into the medial forebrain bundle, while sham surgery rats received saline injections. Rats were pre-treated three times with either IN DFO or saline (starting 4 days before 6-OHDA), and post-treated twice/wk for one month before behavioral tests. In the apomorphine-induced rotational test, IN DFO significantly decreased the number of contralateral turns after injection of apomorphine HCl (p<0.05). Also, IN DFO significantly decreased limb asymmetry in the rearing tube as measured with contralateral limb touches (p<0.05). The IN DFO treatment yielded a trend towards decreased contralateral foot-slips on the tapered balance beam, though the difference was not significant. Finally, IN DFO-treated rats had increased preservation of tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactive neurons in the substantia nigra (p<0.05). These results confirm that DFO is beneficial in a 6-OHDA model and demonstrate improvement in motor deficits and dopaminergic neuronal survival with non-invasive intranasal delivery, making this an attractive potential treatment for PD.

Intranasal deferoxamine improves performance in radial arm water maze, stabilizes HIF-1α, and phosphorylates GSK3ß in P301L tau transgenic mice.

Deferoxamine (DFO), a metal chelator, has been previously reported to slow the loss of spatial memory in a mouse model of amyloid accumulation when delivered intranasally (IN). In this study, we determined whether IN DFO also has beneficial effects in the P301L mouse, which accumulates hyperphosphorylated tau. Mice were intranasally treated three times per week with either 10% DFO (2.4 mg) or saline for 5 months, and a battery of behavioral tests were conducted before tissue collection and biochemical analyses of brain tissue with Western blot and ELISA. Wild-type (WT) mice statistically outperformed transgenic (TG) saline mice in the radial arm water maze, while performance of TG-DFO mice was not different than WT mice, suggesting improved performance in the radial arm water maze. Other behavioral changes were not evident. Beneficial changes in brain biochemistry were evident in DFO-treated mice for several proteins. The TG mice had significantly less pGSK3ß and HIF-1α, with more interleukin-1ß and total protein oxidation than wild-type controls, and for each protein, DFO treatment significantly reduced these differences. There was not a significant decrease in phosphorylated tau in brain tissue of DFO-treated mice at the sites we measured. These data suggest that IN DFO is a potential treatment not only for Alzheimer's disease, but also for other neurodegenerative diseases and psychiatric disorders in which GSK3ß and HIF-1α play a prominent role.

Nucleon axial charge in full lattice QCD.

The nucleon axial charge is calculated as a function of the pion mass in full QCD. Using domain wall valence quarks and improved staggered sea quarks, we present the first calculation with pion masses as light as 354 MeV and volumes as large as (3.5 fm)3. We show that finite volume effects are small for our volumes and that a constrained fit based on finite volume chiral perturbation theory agrees with experiment within 7% statistical errors.

Transverse structure of nucleon parton distributions from lattice QCD.

This work presents the first calculation in lattice QCD of three moments of spin-averaged and spin-polarized generalized parton distributions in the proton. It is shown that the slope of the associated generalized form factors decreases significantly as the moment increases, indicating that the transverse size of the light-cone quark distribution decreases as the momentum fraction of the struck parton increases.

Chiral extrapolation of lattice moments of proton quark distributions.

We present the resolution of a long-standing discrepancy between the moments of parton distributions calculated from lattice QCD and their experimental values. We propose a simple extrapolation formula for the moments of the nonsinglet quark distribution u-d, as a function of quark mass, which embodies the general constraints imposed by the chiral symmetry of QCD. The inclusion of the leading nonanalytic behavior leads to an excellent description of both the lattice data and the experimental values of the moments.

A highly purified RNA polymerase II elongation control system.

Studying the sensitivity of transcription to the nucleotide analog 5,6-dichloro-1-beta-d-ribofuranosylbenzimidazole has led to the discovery of a number of proteins involved in the regulation of transcription elongation by RNA polymerase II. We have developed a highly purified elongation control system composed of three purified proteins added back to isolated RNA polymerase II elongation complexes. Two of the proteins, 5,6-dichloro-1-beta-d-ribofuranosylbenzimidazole sensitivity-inducing factor (DSIF) and negative elongation factor (NELF), act as negative transcription elongation factors by increasing the time the polymerase spent at pause sites. P-TEFb reverses the negative effect of DSIF and NELF through a mechanism dependent on its kinase activity. TFIIF is a general initiation factor that positively affects elongation by decreasing pausing. We show that TFIIF functionally competes with DSIF and NELF, and this competition is dependent on the relative concentrations of TFIIF and NELF.