A team from the Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute (IGTP) in Badalona is performing an experiment at the ALBA Synchrotron to obtain for the first time 3D images of cells with this disease. Friedreich's ataxia affects more than 3,000 people in Spain, causing serious mobility problems and other severe illnesses such as heart disease. At present there is no treatment to prevent or cure the disease.
Synergetic combination of different imaging and spectroscopic synchrotron techniques performed in ALBA and APS (USA) has discovered new aspects about astrocytes cells of this neurodegenerative disease. Results, published in Analytical Chemistry, show significant differences between ALS and control astrocytes, including structural, chemical and macromolecular anomalies.
The structure of cholesterol crystals in atherosclerotic plaques was determined, providing insight on the cellular crystal cholesterol growth mechanisms.
An international team has unraveled details never described before about how the malaria parasite acts after invading the red blood cells. This highlight has been possible thanks to two advanced microscope techniques combination: X-ray fluorescence microscopy and soft X-rays tomography, this one conducted in ALBA Synchrotron. Infected red blood cells image analysis offer new information that could yield new drugs design against malaria, an illness that claims over 400.000 lives each year.
Using ALBA Synchrotron's X-ray microscope, researchers have obtained 3D images of cells full of tiny cholesterol crystals. The aim is to study how these crystals, which are related to arterial obstruction, are formed.
