Kimberly Kegel-Gleason, PhD
Assistant Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Plasma lipids as novel markers of Huntington’s disease progression
One of the earliest signs of Huntington’s disease is damage to the brain’s white matter, the wiring that lets different brain regions communicate. MRI scans can detect these changes, but we do not yet have a simple blood test that tells us the same thing. Dr. Kegel-Gleason’s team has already shown in HD mouse models that when white matter begins to break down, small fat-like molecules from the brain appear in the bloodstream. They also showed that when the harmful huntingtin protein is lowered in these mice, the brain’s white matter remains healthier and those molecules in the blood return to normal. This suggests a tight link between what is happening in the brain and what can be measured in blood. In this project, the team will look for the same patterns in people by comparing blood samples from individuals with and without HD to their MRI scans. If certain molecules in blood track reliably with white-matter changes, they could form the basis of a practical blood test for monitoring disease progression and evaluating whether treatments are working.
