Single-cell gene expression analyses of human cerebrovascular cells can help reveal new drug targets for Huntington’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
While neurons and glial cells are by far the most numerous cells in the brain, many other types of cells play important roles. Among those are cerebrovascular cells, which form the blood vessels that deliver oxygen and other nutrients to the brain.
Those cells, which comprise only 0.3 percent of the brain’s cells, also make up the blood-brain barrier, a critical interface that prevents pathogens and toxins from entering the brain, while allowing critical nutrients and signals through. Researchers from MIT have now performed an extensive analysis of these difficult-to-find cells in human brain tissue, creating a comprehensive atlas of cerebrovascular cell types and their functions.
Their study also revealed differences between cerebrovascular cells from healthy people and people suffering from Huntington’s disease, which could offer new targets for potential ways to treat Huntington’s disease. Breakdown of the blood-brain barrier is associated with Huntington’s and many other neurodegenerative diseases, and often occurs years before any other symptoms appear.
“We think this might be a very promising route because the cerebrovasculature is much more accessible for therapeutics than the cells that lie inside the blood-brain barrier of the brain,” says Myriam Heiman, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and a member of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.
