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. 2013 Oct 17;5(1):61-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2013.08.042. Epub 2013 Oct 3.

Aβ secretion and plaque formation depend on autophagy

Per Nilsson  1 , Krishnapriya Loganathan, Misaki Sekiguchi, Yukio Matsuba, Kelvin Hui, Satoshi Tsubuki, Motomasa Tanaka, Nobuhisa Iwata, Takashi Saito, Takaomi C Saido
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Free article

Aβ secretion and plaque formation depend on autophagy

Per Nilsson et al. Cell Rep. .
Free article

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease biochemically characterized by aberrant protein aggregation, including amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide accumulation. Protein aggregates in the cell are cleared by autophagy, a mechanism impaired in AD. To investigate the role of autophagy in Aβ pathology in vivo, we crossed amyloid precursor protein (APP) transgenic mice with mice lacking autophagy in excitatory forebrain neurons obtained by conditional knockout of autophagy-related protein 7. Remarkably, autophagy deficiency drastically reduced extracellular Aβ plaque burden. This reduction of Aβ plaque load was due to inhibition of Aβ secretion, which led to aberrant intraneuronal Aβ accumulation in the perinuclear region. Moreover, autophagy-deficiency-induced neurodegeneration was exacerbated by amyloidosis, which together severely impaired memory. Our results establish a function for autophagy in Aβ metabolism: autophagy influences secretion of Aβ to the extracellular space and thereby directly affects Aβ plaque formation, a pathological hallmark of AD.

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