Effect of Gene Editing on Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract Background Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most people with Alzheimer’s, symptoms first appear in their mid-60s. Current estimates suggest that 44 million people live with dementia worldwide at present. This is predicted to more than triple by 2050 as the population ages. Alzheimer’s disease is currently ranked as the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, but recent estimates indicate that the disorder may rank third, just behind heart disease and cancer, as a cause of death for older people Treatment is currently targeted toward symptomatic therapy, although trials are underway that aim to reduce the production and overall burden of pathology within the brain. Recently, the Clustered Regular Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR-cas9) has shown promise in certain neurological disorders, it provides a precise editing to human genome and reflect an efficient curative therapy. We aimed to investigate the efficacy of knock-out of the APP gene “Amyloid precursor protein gene(APBA2)that consequently modify the expression of Amyloid protein in leucocytes cell line using CRISPR-cas9 technology. Methods The gene expression profile of Alzheimer's disease was downloaded from biological bioinformatics databases,and based on bioinformatics analysis, we figured out that APP gene was overexpressed in Alzheimer's disease in both brain and peripheral tissues such as plasma, fibroblast and PMNLs. We used PMNLs as the source of gene for edition in our study .We knocked out the APP gene in leucocytes cell lines using CRISPR-cas9 technology. Finally, the gene editing efficacy was evaluated by cell viability assay, the gene expression was measured by qPCR and the Amyloid protein expression was proved by Immunofluorescence. Results knockout of APP gene int Leucocytes Cell line resulted in reduction in cell viability that was associated with marked reduction in the amyloid protein and gene expressions. Conclusion knockout of APP(APBA2) gene represents a promising therapeutic strategy in Alzheimer's disease.