Nixon Lab Members Ju-Hyun Lee and Sandeep Malampati Present at AAIC 2024
Abstracts from two Nixon Lab members were selected from thousands of submissions for poster presentations at the recent Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) 2024. This year’s conference which took place in Philadelphia, featured a poster from Dr. Sandeep Malampati on Sunday, July 28 and another from Dr. Ju-Hyun Lee on Tuesday, July 30.
Dr. Malampati’s presentation titled, “Pharmacological reacidification of lysosomes attenuates intraneuronal amyloidosis, early neuron death, and amyloid plaque formation in 5xFAD mice,” depicted restoring lysosomal acidity via β2-adrenergic receptor (β2-AR) activation with Isoproterenol (ISO) which reverses autophagy-lysosomal pathway (ALP) dysfunction in PSEN1-FAD fibroblasts.
Dr. Lee’s poster illustrated that beginning at a preclinical stage, vulnerable neuron populations in human sporadic AD develop the same PANTHOS pattern of autophagy-lysosomal pathway dysfunction and neuronal cell death as observed uniquely in mouse models of AD, which arises from APP-dependent lysosomal acidification deficiency. ALP failure and PANTHOS development results in early selective neuronal death that initiates emergence of amyloid plaques. The presentation was titled, “A preclinical intraneuronal stage of autophagy-lysosomal dysfunction, amyloidosis, and neuron death yields senile plaques in human late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.”