Dataset Information

Gene Therapy Models of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias.

ABSTRACT: Dementias are among the most common neurological disorders, and Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia worldwide. AD remains a looming health crisis despite great efforts to learn the mechanisms surrounding the neuron dysfunction and neurodegeneration that accompanies AD primarily in the medial temporal lobe. In addition to AD, a group of diseases known as frontotemporal dementias (FTDs) are degenerative diseases involving atrophy and degeneration in the frontal and temporal lobe regions. Importantly, AD and a number of FTDs are collectively known as tauopathies due to the abundant accumulation of pathological tau inclusions in the brain. The precise role tau plays in disease pathogenesis remains an area of strong research focus. A critical component to effectively study any human disease is the availability of models that recapitulate key features of the disease. Accordingly, a number of animal models are currently being pursued to fill the current gaps in our knowledge of the causes of dementias and to develop effective therapeutics. Recent developments in gene therapy-based approaches, particularly in recombinant adeno-associated viruses (rAAVs), have provided new tools to study AD and other related neurodegenerative disorders. Additionally, gene therapy approaches have emerged as an intriguing possibility for treating these diseases in humans. This chapter explores the current state of rAAV models of AD and other dementias, discuss recent efforts to improve these models, and describe current and future possibilities in the use of rAAVs and other viruses in treatments of disease.

SUBMITTER: Combs B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4734109 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Gene Therapy Models of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias.

Combs Benjamin B Kneynsberg Andrew A Kanaan Nicholas M NM

Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) 20160101

Dementias are among the most common neurological disorders, and Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia worldwide. AD remains a looming health crisis despite great efforts to learn the mechanisms surrounding the neuron dysfunction and neurodegeneration that accompanies AD primarily in the medial temporal lobe. In addition to AD, a group of diseases known as frontotemporal dementias (FTDs) are degenerative diseases involving atrophy and degeneration in the frontal and tempor ...[more]

PMID: 26611599

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Project description:Currently, more than 55 million people around the world suffer from dementia, and Alzheimer's disease-related dementia (ADRD) accounts for nearly 60-70% of all those cases. The spread of AD pathology and progressive neurodegeneration in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex is strongly correlated with cognitive decline in AD patients; however, the molecular underpinning of the ADRD causality is still unclear. Studies of postmortem AD brains and animal models of AD suggest that elevated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress may have a role in ADRD pathology through altered neurocellular homeostasis in brain regions associated with learning and memory. To study the ER stress-associated neurocellular response and its effects on neurocellular homeostasis and neurogenesis, we modeled an ER stress challenge using Thapsigargin (TG), a specific inhibitor of sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ ATPase (SERCA), in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural stem cells (NSCs) of two individuals from our Mexican American Family Study (MAFS). High-content screening and transcriptomic analysis of the control and ER stress-challenged NSCs showed that NSC’s ER stress response resulted in a significant decline in NSC self-renewal and an increase in apoptosis and cellular oxidative stress. A total of 2300 genes were significantly (moderated t statistics FDR corrected p-value ≤ 0.05 and Fold Change absolute ≥ 2.0) differentially expressed (DE). Pathway enrichment and gene network analysis of DE genes suggests that all three unfolded protein response (UPR) pathways (PERK, IRE1, and ATF6) were significantly activated and cooperatively regulated the NSC’s transcriptional response to ER stress. Our results show that IRE1/XBP1 mediated transcriptional regulation of E2F1 and its downstream targets have a dominant role in inducing G1/S-phase cell cycle arrest in the ER stress-challenged NSCs. The ER stress-challenged NSCs also showed activation of CHOP-mediated apoptosis and dysregulation of synaptic plasticity and neurotransmitter homeostasis-associated genes. Overall, our results suggest that ER stress-associated attenuation of NSC self-renewal, increased apoptosis, and dysregulated synaptic plasticity and neurotransmitter homeostasis plausibly play a role in the causation of ADRD.

Dataset Information

Gene Therapy Models of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias.

Publications

Gene Therapy Models of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias.

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