Yoshikawa K, Aizawa T, Hayashi Y
Department of Molecular Biology, Tokyo Institute of Psychiatry, Japan.
Nature. 1992 Sep 3;359(6390):64-7. doi: 10.1038/359064a0.
A pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease is the deposition of amyloid fibrils in the brain. The principal component of amyloid fibrils is beta/A4 amyloid protein, which can be generated by the aberrant processing of a large membrane-bound glycoprotein, the beta/A4 amyloid protein precursor (APP)3. To test whether overexpression of APP generates abnormally processed derivatives that affect the viability of neurons, we stably transfected full-length human APP complementary DNA into murine embryonal carcinoma P19 cells. These cells differentiate into post-mitotic neurons and astrocytes after exposure to retinoic acid. When differentiation of the APP cDNA-transfected P19 cells was induced, all neurons showed severe degenerative changes and disappeared within a few days. The degenerating neurons contained large amounts of APP derivatives that were truncated at the amino terminus and encompassed the entire beta/A4 domain. These results suggest that post-mitotic neurons are vulnerable to overexpressed APP, which undergoes aberrant processing to generate potentially amyloidogenic fragments.
