Huntington's damage spreads further through the brain than anyone knew — and the same medicines may reach it

Huntington's disease is driven by a stutter in one gene: a three-letter DNA sequence that repeats until it turns toxic. Scientists knew the repeat expands relentlessly in the striatum, the brain region hit hardest — and a Broad Institute, Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital team now shows, in a Cell study of more than 125,000 cells from the neocortex of 11 people with Huntington's, that the same expansion happens there too, starting past the same threshold of about 150 repeats, just more slowly. That slower burn explains why the cortex fares better for longer — and it carries a hopeful implication: medicines being developed to slow the repeat's expansion could protect much more of the brain than their designers assumed.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation