Researchers answer decades-old question about protein found in Alzheimer's brain plaques

Alzheimer's-affected brains are riddled with amyloid plaques, protein aggregates consisting mainly of amyloid-β. However, amyloid-β is a fragment produced from a precursor protein whose normal function has remained enigmatic for decades. A team of scientists at VIB and KU Leuven led by professors Joris de Wit and Bart De Strooper has now discovered that this amyloid precursor protein modulates neuronal signal transmission by binding to a specific receptor. Modulating this receptor could potentially help treat Alzheimer's or other brain diseases. The results are published in Science.
More than 30 years have passed since the amyloid precursor protein was first identified. In the late 1980s, several research teams around the globe traced the protein fragment found in amyloid plaques back to a gene located on chromosome 21. The gene encodes a longer protein that is cleaved into several fragments, one of which ends up in amyloid plaques.