[Research Articles] APOE immunotherapy reduces cerebral amyloid angiopathy and amyloid plaques while improving cerebrovascular function

The 4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and greatly influences the development of amyloid-β (Aβ) pathology. Our current study investigated the potential therapeutic effects of the anti-human APOE antibody HAE-4, which selectively recognizes human APOE that is co-deposited with Aβ in cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) and parenchymal amyloid pathology. In addition, we tested whether HAE-4 provoked brain hemorrhages, a component of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA). ARIA is an adverse effect secondary to treatment with anti–Aβ antibodies that can occur in blood vessels with CAA. We used 5XFAD mice expressing human APOE4+/+ (5XE4) that have prominent CAA and parenchymal plaque pathology to assess the efficacy of HAE-4 compared to an Aβ antibody that removes parenchymal Aβ but increases ARIA in humans. In chronically treated 5XE4 mice, HAE-4 reduced Aβ deposition including CAA compared to a control antibody, whereas the anti–Aβ antibody had no effect on CAA. Furthermore, the anti–Aβ antibody exacerbated microhemorrhage severity, which highly correlated with reactive astrocytes surrounding CAA. In contrast, HAE-4 did not stimulate microhemorrhages and instead rescued CAA-induced cerebrovascular dysfunction in leptomeningeal arteries in vivo. HAE-4 not only reduced amyloid but also dampened reactive microglial, astrocyt...

Source: Science Translational Medicine - February 17, 2021 Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Xiong, M., Jiang, H., Serrano, J. R., Gonzales, E. R., Wang, C., Gratuze, M., Hoyle, R., Bien-Ly, N., Silverman, A. P., Sullivan, P. M., Watts, R. J., Ulrich, J. D., Zipfel, G. J., Holtzman, D. M. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research