This week HDSA is celebrating National Volunteer Appreciation Week. This goes for research, too! We’d like to express our heartfelt thanks to everyone who lends a hand to make HDSA’s work possible and contributes to the progress of HD science. Our understanding and our ability to treat HD is constantly expanding because of extraordinary volunteers…

Huntington’s disease research plays a big role at our annual Convention, which is taking place this year on June 7th-9th in Los Angeles, California. We’ll have talks and poster sessions presented by HDSA-funded scientists including our Donald King Summer Research Fellows, Human Biology Project Fellows, and recipients of the Berman-Topper Career Development Fellowship. Other research…

Interview study for parents and adolescents about genetic risk If you are 15-17 years old or are the parent of a 15-17 year old, consider participating in an interview study with researchers at Johns Hopkins on communicating about genetic risk for Huntington’s disease. The 45-minute interview can be conducted by Skype or phone from anywhere…

HDSA Human Biology Project The identification of the HD gene led to the development of many animal models that have helped us to better understand the biology of Huntington’s disease. However, in the hunt for effective therapies, the most relevant observations arise from studying human bodies, brains, and cells. In 2013, HDSA launched the Human…

This week marks 25 years since the identification of the gene that causes Huntington’s disease. The discovery of the repeating CAG sequence in the DNA was made in 1993 by the Huntington’s Disease Collaborative Research Group, an assembly of scientists across six institutions. They had united nearly a decade earlier, in 1984, after Jim Gusella’s…

On Monday, HDSA announced a partnership with the ALS Association and Teva Pharmaceuticals on a project to help identify new drug targets for serious diseases of the nervous system, such as chronic pain, ALS, migraine, and Huntington’s disease. Teva is seeking proposals for new ways to design treatments for these and other neurological disorders through…

Interpreting this week’s news: data from the first phase of the Ionis-Roche Trial This week, Ionis Pharmaceuticals shared data from the successful safety trial for their huntingtin-lowering drug. The data confirms what was announced in December 2017: the drug safely lowers mutant huntingtin. No one taking the drug had a serious side effect, and no…

This week in Palm Springs, California marks the 13th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference. This yearly conference draws academic and industry researchers from all over the world to share their work about Huntington’s disease and participate in discussions about the latest in HD drug discovery. HD Buzz is covering the 3-day conference in real time through…

Getting gene therapies into the brain Delivery of genetic therapies to the brain is one of the biggest challenges facing researchers in many fields of neurological disease, including HD. One novel approach, tested only experimentally in mice, is to use a type of harmless virus that can cross from the blood into the brain. Researchers…

Research studies in recent years have shown that people with Huntington’s Disease and related hereditary CAG repeat disorders have lower rates of cancer than the general population. We’re not sure why that’s the case, but some scientists suspected that the HD gene and its toxic RNA message might actually have some cancer-fighting power. In a…