The impact of astrocytes on Alzheimer’s disease progression

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia. Yet, no treatments that limit neurodegeneration or slow down the disease progression are available. Hence, innovative therapeutic approaches are clearly required.

Decades of research have focused on neuronal abnormalities during AD progression, while glial cells, including astrocytes, have been given much less attention.

The aim of this project is to clarify the involvement of astrocytes in AD and to investigate their therapeutic potential.

Our previous results demonstrate that astrocytes engulf large amounts of aggregated amyloid-beta and tau, but then store, rather than degrade the ingested material.

This incomplete degradation results in severe cellular stress and the release of extracellular vesicles containing neurotoxic content, which could be of relevance for AD progression.

To further investigate the impact of astrocytes in the propagation of amyloid-beta and tau pathology, we will perform advanced cell culture experiments, analyze human brain tissue from AD patients and perform multi-photon microscopy in mice.

Moreover, we will elucidate if antigen presenting astrocytes are driving the chronic inflammation in AD and identify ways to reduce astrocyte-mediated neurotoxicity and disease spreading.

Being the most numerous glial cell type in the brain, astrocytes constitute a compelling treatment target and our results will contribute important data to the research field.