Processing of the amyloid precursor protein and its paralogues amyloid precursor-like proteins 1 and 2

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is today the most common form of dementia. It is a neurodegenerative disorder which is histopathologically characterised by amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques consist of the amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) that can form aggregates in the brain. Aβ is generated from the amyloid precursor protein (APP) through proteolytic cleavage. APP belongs to a conserved protein family that also includes the two paralogues, APP-like proteins 1 and 2 (APLP1 and APLP2). Despite the immense amount of research on APP, motivated by its implication in AD, the function of this protein family has not yet been determined. In this thesis, we have studied the expression and proteolytic processing of the APP protein family. Our results are consistent with previous findings that suggest a role for APP during neuronal development. Treatment of cells with retinoic acid (RA) resulted in increased synthesis. In addition, we observed that RA treatment shifted the processing of APP from the amyloidogenic to the nonamyloidogenic pathway. The proteins in the APP family have been hard to distinguish both with respect to function and proteolytic processing. However, for development of new drugs with APP processing enzymes as targets this is of great importance. Our studies suggest similarities, but also differences in the mechanism regulating the processing of the different paralogues. We found that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) had different impact on the members of the APP family. Most interestingly, we also found that the mechanism behind the increased processing in response to IGF-1 was not identical between the homologous proteins. In summary, our results indicate that in terms of regulation APLP1 and APLP2 differ more from each other than from APP. Our studies open up the possibility of finding means to selectively block Aβ production without interfering with the processing and function of the paralogous proteins.