Benjamin Woodman

TL;DR: Preclinical trials with suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a potent HDAC inhibitor, show that SAHA crosses the blood–brain barrier and increases histone acetylation in the brain, clearly validating the pursuit of this class of compounds as HD therapeutics.

TL;DR: It is found that even limited environmental enrichment slows decline in RotaRod performance in R6/2 mice, despite rapid disease progression, whereas in normal littermates, maximal enrichment was required to induce a marked improvement in behavioral tests.

TL;DR: It is shown that a decreased mRNA level of the major astroglial glutamate transporter (GLT1) in the striatum and cortex of these mice is accompanied by a concomitant decrease in glutamate uptake, suggesting that a defect in astrocytic glutamate uptake may contribute to the phenotype and neuronal cell death in HD.

TL;DR: It is shown that tetracyclines are potent inhibitors of huntingtin aggregation in a hippocampal slice culture model of HD at an effective concentration of 30μM, and cautioned that caution be exercised in proceeding into human clinical trials of minocycline.

TL;DR: This work investigates the sources of phenotypic variability in R6/2, and makes recommendations for the future use of such models in therapeutic trials, to assess novel therapeutic approaches to Huntington's disease.