Familial Alzheimer's: How Stem Cells Could Help Identify Its Origins

Alzheimer's isn't something to joke about. Never forget that!

Alzheimer's disease is a common 'forgetting' disease among older people. One type of AD, familial AD, is passed down from family members. Through the use of pluripotent stem cells, a team of scientists were able to understand more clearly the origins of familial AD by studying the protein presenilin 1 (PS1). PS1 is an enzymatic protein that regulates gamma secretase, which cleaves amyloid precursor proteins (APPs). The functions of APP are not entirely known, but it is believed that the cleaved products of APP, amyloid betas, can cause plaques to form that can kill neurons in the brain if cleaved wrong, most likely causing AD. The scientists discovered that mutant forms of PS1 caused twice the amount of APP that were cut wrong. Here is where the pluripotent stem cells came in. Neurons that were derived from Craig Ventor's own stem cells were created, each with different alleles of the PSEN1 mutant gene. This helped them figure out what effects different mutations had on the neurological level. My question to you is this: Pluripotent stem cells are stem cells that have the potential to form any other type of cell it needs to in the body, and because it has the potential, it is still in its infancy at the time and usually is taken from human embryos. However, because the stem cells used here were derived from an adult, and not from a human embryo, do you believe stem cells are now significant in scientific experimentation?

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