CONFERENCE COVERAGE SERIES
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 1999
Miami Beach, FL, U.S.A.
23 – 28 October 1999
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: β-Secretase Further Confirmed
Sukanto Sinha, departing from his abstract (122.1), described the purification and partial characterization of a novel 501 amino acid long aspartyl protease, The data were entirely consistent with the...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Another APP Secretase?
Just when it appeared as though the mechanisms of the proteolytic processing of APP were finally becoming apparent, Andreas Weidemann presented an elegant study demonstrating the existence of a different processing event...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Imaging Amyloid Plaques in the Living Mouse
One of the limitations in studying the pathogenic role of amyloid plaque deposition is the fact that conventional methods allow microscopic analysis only of postmortem tissue, which can provide...
Soc for Neuroscience Ann Mtg: One γ-Secretase, Two Different Activities?
Using difluoroketone peptidomimetics previously shown to reversibly inhibit γ-secretase activity in CHO cells, Michael Wolfe reported that increasing the bulkiness of the P1 substituent...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Caspase-mediate Production of Aβ
In testing the hypothesis that unscheduled cell death may alter APP processing, Andrea Le Blanc (122.4) provided compelling evidence that caspase 6 can directly cleave APP...
Soc for Neuroscience Ann Mtg: APP and Intracellular Aβ Balance Critical
Recent studies have demonstrated that wild-type APP can protect against p53 mediated apoptosis, whereas FAD mutant APP (FADAPP) cannot. N3 rat neuroblastoma cells which are deficient in APP were transfected with wtAPP or FADAPP...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: α1-Antichymotrypsin
Yamin (122.9) presented evidence that the zinc metalloproteinase EC 3.4.24.15 (E24.15) plays a role in neuronal mediated degradation of Aβ...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Making the Right Mouse Model?
Several groups have reported a lack of phenotype in α-synuclein (α-S) transgenic mice, but it appears Lennart Mucke (122.10) has got it right...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Enzyme Mediates Aβ Degradation
Previous studies on the purification and characterization of the predominant extracellular Aβ degrading activity in the murine BV-2 microglial cell line demonstrated that insulin-degrading enzyme...
Soc for Neuroscience Ann Mtg: Novel Assay for in Vivo Catabolism of Aβ
The N- and C-terminals of synthetic Aβ1-42 were differentially labeled with 3H and 14C and then used as a probe to measure degradation by injection into rat hippocampus...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: APP Binds to Fibrillar Aβ
Treatment of human cerebovascular smooth muscle (HCSM) cells with Aβ1-42 or AβQ22 (a mutant associated with hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis-Dutch type) leads to the formation of ...
Soc for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Novel Receptor Interaction for Aβ
That β-amyloid plays a central role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease is doubted by few investigators. However, pinning down the exact contribution amyloid makes has been remarkably difficult to accomplish...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Evidence for Additional Genetic Risk Factors for AD
Papassotiropoulos (1201) began his presentation by reviewing the evidence for a role of cathepsin D, an aspartyl protease, in AD. Previous work has implicated catD as a secretase in the cleavage of APP...
Soc for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Lipoproteins Reduce Clearance of Aβ
Using exquisite human primary cortical cultures containing neurons, astrocytes, and microglia, Nadeau (319.1) demonstrated that addition of VLDLs or HDLs increased media levels of both Aβ40 and Aβ42...
Soc for Neuroscience Ann Mtg: Reduced Cholesterol Levels Inhibit Aβ
Using primary hippocampal neurons transfected with APP by means of the Semliki-forest-virus expression system, Christine Bergmann (319.2) demonstrated that lovastatin (which inhibits de novo cholesterol synthesis)...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Intraneuronal Aβ
Until very recently, Aβ accumulation and aggregation were thought to be exclusively extracellular phenomena. However, a number of abstracts presented at this meeting...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: DIGs—a Site of Aβ?
Kawarabayashi (319.10) presented compelling data for a time-dependent accumulation of Aβ in the detergent-insoluble glycolipid enriched membrane domains (DIGs) of Tg2576 mouse brain...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: The TGN—Where It's Happening?
In an exhaustive study, Iwata (240.1) presented evidence that the trans Golgi network was the major site of Aβ42 production in both neural and non-neural cells...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Endocrepsin is BACE
At times the scene around this poster (240.11) was more like a football scrimmage or a rugby scrum than the normally genteel atmosphere associated with a scientific event...
Soc for Neuroscience Ann Mtg: Proteasome Inhibition Boosts Aβ
Janet Johnston (240.16) presented a detailed study of the effect of proteasome and prolendopeptidase (PEP) inhibitors on Aβ production by SH SY 5Y human neuroblastoma cells stably transfected with SPA4CT (C99)...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: TACE, TAPI, and ADAM10
The mechanisms of regulated α-secretase cleavage were thoroughly examined in two excellent companion posters from Virginia Lee’s lab...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Be Wise—Immunize!
In the relatively short time allotted, Dale Schenk (519.5) managed to describe most of the data from his group’s recent Nature paper (Nature 1999;400:173-177), and a little more...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: A Sniff of Aβ
Chronic mucosal administration of certain proteins is known to decrease organ-specific autoimmune processes in several autoimmune models, including those affecting the CNS...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Presenilins: An Overview
Research on presenilins presented at this year's meeting centered around two major questions: 1) What is the role of presenilins in Aβ production and APP processing, and 2) what are the other biological actions of presenilins?...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: α-Synuclein: A Review
Hashimoto, Masliah and colleagues (27.14) reported that cytochrome C stimulates α-synuclein aggregration in vitro and that cytochrome C can be observed in Lewy bodies, in postmortem brain tissue...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: ApoE Affects Pattern of Amyloid Deposition in Tg Mice
Irizarry and collaborators (626.5) provided intriguing new results from transgenic mouse lines expressing human APP (the PDAPP mice) in the presence or absence of endogenous mouse ApoE...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting: Which Aβ Species Is the Culprit?
Dean Hartley (12.5) presented data on the deleterious effects of "protofibrillar" Aβ on neurons. Several other groups have reported that amyloid protofibrils of one sort of another...
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Miami: Tau Update
Toward a neurofibrillary degeneration animal model, Michael Vitek's group (317.1) reported on their tau knockouts. Homozygous mice demonstrated the lack of tau...