Year 3
Alzheimer’s disease affects more than 5.5 million people in the USA. Problems with memory correspond with the appearance of insoluble plaques in certain brain regions, and these plaques large consist of a peptide called, amyloid-beta. For more than a decade it has known that certain immune responses to amyloid-beta improve memory in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease, yet in humans little is known about how those responses normally occur or if they may a beneficial therapeutic strategy. In this grant we have used stem cell technology to pioneer a new method to isolate and characterize those cells using only 20 cc of whole blood from a variety of human subjects. We have found that these immune responses increase dramatically in when high-risk people are in their late 40’s and early 50’s. Those responses may provide protection against Alzheimer’s disease progression as they diminish as memory problems begin to develop. This technology will be developed as an early diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease with private equity partners. A patent application covering this technology was submitted by the Western University of Health Sciences.