Human induced pluripotent stem cells derived from a sporadic Alzheimer's disease patient

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) disease models have been generated for a number of diseases, and some have shown their potential utilization for pathological and drug toxicological evaluations. We have generated two hiPSC clones from a non-familial Alzheimers patient (AD-iPSCs), which expressed typical undifferentiated markers and fulfilled standard pluripotency assays. Genome-wide microarray analysis revealed that AD-iPSCs are highly similar to control hiPSCs and hESCs, albeit with some noticeable differences in several genes: DNAJC15, GRPR, NAIP and SNORD116-18. Several other biomarkers were differentially expressed in AD-iPSC clones, which were implicated in memory impairment and AD. Furthermore, well characterized familial AD-associated genes (APP, PSEN1, PSEN2) and non-familial (A2M, APOE, GAP43, MAOA, MPO, PLAT, PLAU, SORL1, SNCA) exhibited different expression patterns but were largely reset upon reprogramming into a pluripotent state. Overall, hiPSCs can be good candidates for AD modeling and may represent an in vitro alternative to studying disease mechanisms and drug discovery/toxicology studies.

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