Alzheimer's mouse, part III - mice created that develop beta-amyloid plaques and memory problems characteristic of Alzheimer's disease - Biomedicine - Brief Article

Science News, Oct 19, 1996

First came genetically engineered mice that developed plaques, or thick deposits of a protein called beta-amyloid, in the brain but showed no obvious memory problems (SN: 2/11/95, p. 84). Then researchers created mice whose memory skills deteriorated with age but whose brains had few amyloid plaques (SN: 6/10/95, p. 358).

Now, a group of investigators from the United Kingdom and the United States has finally produced mice suffering from both of these cardinal features of Alzheimer's disease. They added to the mice a gene for the protein precursor of beta-amyloid, having first given the gene a mutation identical to one found in a family plagued by early-onset Alzheimer's.

The mice began suffering memory problems 9 to 10 months after birth, had sig- nificantly more beta-amyloid in their brains than normal mice, and developed numerous plaques, Karen Hsiao of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and her colleagues report in the Oct. 4 Science. The researchers intend to study how well other aspects of the animals model the human disease and to use them to test potential new drugs for Alzheimer's.