Abstract
Filamentous aggregates of the protein tau are a prominent feature of Alzheimer's disease (AD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). However, the extent to which the molecular structure of the tau in these aggregates is similar or differs between these diseases is unclear. We approached this question by examining these disorders with a panel of antibodies that represent different structural, conformational, and cleavage-specific tau epitopes. Although each of these antibodies reveals AD pathology, they resolved into three classes with respect to PSP and CBD: AD2 and Tau-46.1 stained the most tau pathology in all cases; Tau-1, 2, 5, and 12 exhibited variable reactivity; and Tau-66 and MN423 did not reveal any tau pathology. In addition, hippocampal neurofibrillary tangles in these cases showed a predominantly PSP/CBD-like, rather than AD-like, staining pattern. These results indicate that the patterns of the tau epitopes represented by this panel that reside in the pathological aggregates of PSP and CBD are similar to each other but distinct from that of AD.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 287-295 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Neurocytology |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2004 |
Funding
The authors are indebted to Dr. Francisco Garcia-Sierra for help with the confocal microscopy. We thank Drs. Andre Delacourte, Peter Davies, Michal Novak, and Virginia Lee for their generous gifts of AD2, Alz 50, MN423, and Tau 46.1, respectively. We are especially grateful to the patients and their families without whom this study would not have been possible. This work was supported by NIH grants P01 AG09466, P30 AG13854, P30 AG10161, and P01 AG021184.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Neuroscience
- Anatomy
- Cell Biology
- Histology