Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells in Modeling Alzheimer’s

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease is a lengthy progression of neuronal degeneration, which leads to a total loss of brain function and death. While it is known that the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene plays a critical role in Alzheimer’s disease, it is difficult to study the pathology of the disease due to the problems with obtaining live human neurons. However, one route of advancement in this field is the use of fibroblasts induced into pluripotent stem cells, and then further differentiated into neurons to be studied in vivo. Our eventual goal is to infect human embryonic stem cells with a virus carrying the APP gene, which would cause overexpression of the gene when the cells differentiate. These cells would then be valuable tools in studying the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. The research presented here focuses on testing the success of this neuronal differentiation process as a first step towards developing this model of the disease.