Cellular Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

choi

Gina Kolata, Breakthrough Replicates Human Brain Cells for Use in Alzheimer’s Research. New York Times, Oct 13, 2014.
www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/scien ... n-a-petri-dish.html

Quote:

(a) “The key to their success, said the lead researcher, Rudolph E. Tanzi of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was a suggestion by his colleague Doo Yeon Kim to grow human brain cells in a gel, where they formed networks as in an actual brain. They gave the neurons genes for Alzheimer’s disease. Within weeks they saw the hard Brillo-like clumps known as plaques and then the twisted spaghetti-like coils known as tangles — the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease.

(b) “Tangles formed with nothing but the presence of amyloid plaques. And drugs that block beta amyloid [plaque] prevent both plaques and tangles from forming, Dr [Rudolph E] Tanzi and his colleagues reported. ‘This provides strong support to the amyloid hypothesis and essentially cinches the serial link between amyloid and intracellular tangles,’ Dr [P Murali] Doraiswamy[, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Duke University,] said.


My comment:
(a) Pathology of Alzheimer’s disease invariably shows, under microscope, both beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.

Nicholas Kanaan. College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, undated
translationalscience.msu.edu/research/NMKlab.htm
(first photo displayed both)

(b) So far,
(i) scientists have no ideas what causes Alzheimer’s disease, whether these two are causes or effects of the disease (though familiar cases of Alzheimer’s disease showing gene defects hint they are causes, rather than by products), and
(ii) there is no in vitro model for the disease. That is, the same pathological findings that appears in a petri dish.

(c) This report purports to supply answers to both conundrums posted in (b).

(d)
(i) Rudolph E Tanzi, PhD, is a principal investigator at Mass General Hospital and Joseph P and Rose F Kennedy Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School.
(ii) Doo Yeon KIM, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, undated.
curealz.org/people/doo-yeon-kim
(iii) P Murali Doraiswamy, MD
www.dibs.duke.edu/research/profiles/35-p-murali-doraiswamy
(Professor, Translational Neuroscience Division, School of Medicine and Duke Institute for Brain Science (DIBS); A native of Chennai, India, Murali obtained his medical degree from the University of Madras India and completed his internship and residency at Duke Medicine)

(e) Choi SH et al, A Three-Dimensional Human Neural Cell Culture Model of Alzheimer’s Disease. Nature, _: _ (online publication Oct 12, 2014).
www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13800.html