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Researchers uncover novel self-assembly of Alzheimer’s amyloid fibrils

Researchers at Emory University and Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a new method to manipulate the self-assembly and formation of amyloid fibrils, a major component of brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby opening new avenues for examination of their formation and for the construction of robust nanotubes that have potential applications in research, industry and medicine.

Researchers create powerful stem cells from blood

The particularly powerful ? and very scarce ? flexible forms of stem cells needed for medical research and treatment may now be both plentiful and simple to produce, with a new technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory ? and the source is as close as your own bloodstream. These flexible stem cells, able to morph into a variety of cell types, are called “pluripotent,” and before this Argonne research, they have been found only in fetal tissue, which is limited, and in bone marrow, which is difficult to collect. Pluripotent stem cells are important because they can generate all types of tissues found in the body, and the Argonne-developed technology can produce them from adult blood cells.