3 departments joint research team, multidisciplinary approach
From left, Professor Se-beom Baek, Professor Son Jong-woo, and Dr. Koh Hyun-yong [KAIST 제공. 재판매 및 DB 금지]
(Daejeon = Yonhap News) Reporter Joo-Young Park = The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced that a joint research team led by Jeong-ho Lee of the Graduate School of Medicine, Se-beom Baek of the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, and Professor Jong-woo Son of the Department of Life Sciences, has identified the process of developing intractable epilepsy (epileptic) with high drug resistance. announced on the 25th.
Focal cortical dysplasia, the cause of intractable epilepsy, is a disease that occurs when nerve cells (neurons) cannot move to each area of the brain cortex while the brain is growing in a fetal state.
It is known that it is caused by somatic genetic mutation (somatic genetic mutation that occurs after fertilization, unlike general reproductive genetic mutation) along the ‘Emtor’ pathway involved in intracellular signal transduction.
Although it is one of the common causes of epilepsy, it is difficult to treat because it does not respond to antiepileptic drugs.
Using an animal model, the research team discovered the principle that somatic genetic mutations in individual neurons lead to neural network-level seizures.
[KAIST 제공. 재판매 및 DB 금지]
Somatic genetic mutations occur in very small numbers of neurons, less than 5% of brain tissue.
As a result of simulation of overall neural network activity, these mutations are limited to very few neurons, so changes in the electrical properties of these cells themselves cannot explain the abnormal activity of the entire neural network.
The research team confirmed that the activity capable of inducing epilepsy was not caused by the MTOR somatic genetic mutation, but by the surrounding non-mutated neurons.
Additional animal experiments and postoperative brain tissue studies revealed that adenosine kinase was overexpressed in cells carrying the emtor somatic mutation.
From this, it was found that hyperactivity of peripheral non-mutated neurons was induced, resulting in seizure activity at the level of the entire neural network.
It is expected to contribute to the identification of the cause of epilepsy and the development of treatments.
Professors Jeong-ho Lee, Se-beom Baek, and Jong-woo Son said, “Through a multidisciplinary approach between the three departments, simulation studies at the level of intracellular genetics, the electrophysiology of a single neuron, and the entire brain were able to explain the complex pathogenesis as a whole. “He said.
The results of this study were published on the 29th of last month in the international academic journal ‘Annals of Neurology’.
jyoung@yna.co.kr
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2021/08/25 13:00 Send
