New markers help diagnose Alzheimer's disease

Recently, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have identified an accumulated proteome in the brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease. These findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, may help open up new ways to diagnose Alzheimer's patients. [J Neurosci 2012 Jun 13;32(24):8270-83]

Beta-amyloid aggregation induces neuronal protein aggregation that causes Alzheimer's disease, which is a neurodegenerative disease. Alzheimer's disease is mainly diagnosed with β-amyloid protein and tau protein, mainly using radioactive markers to bind β-amyloid protein. However, β-amyloid imaging is problematic because many cognitively normal elderly people also have a large amount of β-amyloid in their brains, so positive results may appear in the test results.

BUSM researchers found that the new proteome is called RNA-binding protein, which is also accumulated in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, especially in those elderly people with cognitive ability below normal. The team found that proteins such as TIA-1 and TTP aggregated and induced tau protein aggregation in neurons. Dr. Benjamin Wolozin explained that these proteins also bind to tau and may participate in the development of the disease. A different RNA binding protein, G3BP, accumulates in neurons but does not induce pathological tau protein aggregation.

The researchers believe that this work to quantify these biomarkers of RNA binding proteins is conducive to opening up new ways to diagnose and treat Alzheimer's patients.