Lithium is one of the oldest psychiatric drugs and still used routinely to ameliorate the symptoms of mood disorders. New results by Huda Zoghbi (Baylor College of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute), Harry Orr (University of Minnesota) and colleagues now suggest that lithium also holds promise in treating a group of devastating neurodegenerative disorders for which no other treatments exist at present.

Jerry Workman, Ph.D., Investigator, and Bing Li, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate in the Workman Lab, have published evidence demonstrating that a combinatorial action of multiple protein domains is required to read a histone modification.

Scientists at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, have identified a key mechanism for successfully transplanting tissue into the adult central nervous system. The study found that a molecule known as MMP-2 (which is induced by stem cells) has the ability to break down barriers on the outer surface of a damaged retina and allow healthy donor cells to integrate and wire themselves into remaining recipient tissue.

Huntington's disease, an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that affects roughly 30,000 Americans, is incurable and fatal. But a new discovery about how cells repair their DNA points to a possible way to stop or slow the onset of the disease. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).