In vitro models of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease

Dementia affects over 55 million people worldwide and Alzheimer’s disease accounts for up to 70% of these people. Most Alzheimer’s disease cases are described as late-onset Alzheimer’s disease and occur after the age of 65.

One of the most decisive risk factors in developing Alzheimer’s disease is having two copies of the APOE4 allele, which can result in a 15-fold increase in the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Around 2–3% of cases are the result of a hereditary condition known as early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and these are strongly associated with mutations in presenilin-1 (PSEN1), amyloid precursor protein (APP), and presenilin-2 (PSEN2) genes.

We also have iPSCs derived from three other patient donors with the APOE4 genotype for Alzheimer’s which can be differentiated into any cell type. Please contact us for more information.

Alzheimer's Disease

Human iPSC-derived neural stem cells from Alzheimer’s disease patients

Accurately model this disease in vitro by choosing neural stem cells (NSCs) from Alzheimer’s disease patients with mutations in PSEN1 genes, a patient homozygous for the APOE4 allele, or healthy donor iPSCs to use as a control.

To create these NSCs we took fibroblasts from patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and reprogrammed them to iPSCs using our footprint-free episomal reprogramming method. We then differentiated them into neural stem cells using our chemically defined cortical neural induction method. NSCs express typical markers of cerebral cortical neural stem and progenitor cells that include PAX6, FOXG1, and nestin.