Study finds path for addressing Alzheimer’s blood-brain barrier impairment
By developing a lab-engineered model of the human blood-brain barrier (BBB), neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have discovered how the most common Alzheimer’s disease risk gene causes amyloid protein plaques to disrupt the brain’s vasculature and showed they could prevent the damage with medications already approved for human use. About 25 percent of people have the APOE4 variant of the APOE gene, which puts them at substantially greater risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Almost everyone with Alzheimer’s, and even some elderly people without, suffer from cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a condition in which amyloid protein deposits on blood vessel walls impairs the ability of the BBB to properly transport nutrients, clear out waste, and prevent the invasion of pathogens and unwanted substances. In the new study, published June 8 in Nature Medicine, the researchers pinpointed the specific vascular cell type (pericytes) and molecular pathway (calcineurin/NFAT) through which the APOE4...