April 24, 2024
Keio University School of Medicine
A research group led by Rei Murakami (then a student in the Doctoral Programs at the Keio University Graduate School of Medicine), Professor Hideyuki Okano (Director of the Keio University Regenerative Medicine Research Center (KRM)), and Project Lecturer Hiroki Watanabe of the Tonomachi Town Campus has elucidated the mechanism by which a gene associated with Alzheimer's disease suppresses its onset and progression, using human iPS cell-derived astrocytes.
The Christchurch variant of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, one of the genes associated with Alzheimer's disease, was reported in 2019 as potentially suppressing the onset and progression of the disease. However, it remained unclear how the APOE Christchurch variant suppresses the onset and progression of the disease. Using genome editing technology, this research group created iPS cell-derived astrocytes with the APOE Christchurch variant and investigated their effects on neurons derived from patients with familial Alzheimer's disease. They discovered that the spread of tau protein between neurons, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, is suppressed by astrocytes carrying the APOE Christchurch variant.
The results of this study successfully demonstrate the suppressive effect of astrocytes with the APOE Christchurch variant on Alzheimer's disease. This could lead to the development of new drugs based on the novel perspective of suppressing the spread of tau protein neuropathology observed in the diseased brain.
These research findings were published in the online edition of the Journal of Neuroscience , the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), on April 22, 2024 (US Eastern Time).
Please see below for the full press release.