Year 1

The goal of this project has been to understand how neurons made from stem cells that are genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s disease in a dish generate abnormal biochemistry that we can measure with simple assays. In the first year of this project we developed new probes for the pathway we are trying to measure. However, we encountered technical obstacles that interfere with our ability to evaluate the function of this pathway. We think we have identified the cause of the problems and in the second year of the project we will initiate experiments to solve these problems and rigorously evaluate how genetic mutations that cause abnormal Alzheimer’s biochemistry generate the abnormal biochemistry in our human neural system made from stem cells.