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News Beck 10.2019
An interneuron (bright, with long appendages) from the hippocampus of the rat. The finely branched axon (top left cloud) surrounds the cell bodies of pyramidal cells and can inhibit these effectively.
© Leonie Pothmann/Uni Bonn

Publication

Epilepsy: Function of "brake cells" disrupted

In some forms of epilepsy, the function of certain "brake cells" in the brain is presumed to be disrupted. This may be one of the reasons why the electrical malfunction is able to spread from the point of origin across large parts of the brain. A current study by the University of Bonn with members of the cluster of excellence ImmunoSensation2, in which researchers from Lisbon were also involved, points in this direction. The results are published in the renowned "Journal of Neuroscience".

Publication

Leonie Pothmann, Christian Klos, Oliver Braganza, Sarah Schmidt, Oihane Horno, Raoul-Martin Memmesheimer and Heinz Beck: Altered dynamics of canonical feed-back inhibition predicts increased burst transmission in chronic epilepsy; The Journal Of Neuroscience; https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2594-18.2019

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New vulnerability of asthma immune cells discovered

—Why do certain immune cells remain permanently active in allergic asthma – even in an environment that should actually damage them? A team from the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn has discovered that these cells only survive because they activate a special antioxidant protection mechanism. When this mechanism is blocked, allergic inflammation in mouse models decreases significantly. The results have now been published in the scientific journal Immunity.
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A starting point for the development of new pain and cancer drugs

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Publication

Ominous false alarm in the kidney

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