Understanding the Chicken Embryo Model for Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Research
Session Number
Q07
Advisor(s)
William Klein, Northwestern University Kirsten Viola, Northwestern University
Location
A-123
Start Date
28-4-2016 1:10 PM
End Date
28-4-2016 1:35 PM
Abstract
One major hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the accumulation of toxic amyloid-β oligomers (AβOs), but scientists do not fully understand why this increase occurs. Most researchers currently use the transgenic mice model to understand the AD pathways, but some studies have shown that the chicken embryo may be a more suitable and less costly alternative because chickens and humans have identical Aβ peptides. The purpose of our study was to gather more information on this embryonic model. First, we observed the relationship between AβOs and APP in the brain tissues of embryos that have been fertilized for 6-14 days (E6-E14). After normalizing the brain extracts between all samples, we obtained the relative concentrations between APP and AβOs at each stage of development tested and determined that there is a statistically significant correlation between APP and AβOs (p < 0.01). In addition, we chose to test the abilities of chicken embryo cultures for drug testing research. Hotspot assays were conducted on 3-dayold E8 cell cultures to determine if synthetic AβOs will bind to the avian neurons. Because oligomers did not bind to the neurons, we concluded that we cannot perform drug testing research on cell cultures of the model
Understanding the Chicken Embryo Model for Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Research
A-123
One major hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the accumulation of toxic amyloid-β oligomers (AβOs), but scientists do not fully understand why this increase occurs. Most researchers currently use the transgenic mice model to understand the AD pathways, but some studies have shown that the chicken embryo may be a more suitable and less costly alternative because chickens and humans have identical Aβ peptides. The purpose of our study was to gather more information on this embryonic model. First, we observed the relationship between AβOs and APP in the brain tissues of embryos that have been fertilized for 6-14 days (E6-E14). After normalizing the brain extracts between all samples, we obtained the relative concentrations between APP and AβOs at each stage of development tested and determined that there is a statistically significant correlation between APP and AβOs (p < 0.01). In addition, we chose to test the abilities of chicken embryo cultures for drug testing research. Hotspot assays were conducted on 3-dayold E8 cell cultures to determine if synthetic AβOs will bind to the avian neurons. Because oligomers did not bind to the neurons, we concluded that we cannot perform drug testing research on cell cultures of the model