Purification and Characterization of Amyloid-beta Oligomers from Human Brain

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of problems with memory, thinking, and behavior in older people; it is most likely caused by accumulation of a small protein called beta amyloid. Despite decades of work, there is no cure or effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease, in part because our attempts so far have not focused on the most toxic forms of beta amyloid. We have developed methods to accurately measure these toxic forms of beta amyloid in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, and we now propose to purify these beta amyloid samples so that we can study them in detail. This project is vital because understanding the toxic forms of beta amyloid will help us efficiently design effective treatments to prevent them from forming, block their toxicity, or eliminate them from the brain.