Fifty people and a great variety of enthusiastic neurobiologists, immunologists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuropathologists, computer biologists, computer engineers and neurophysiologists attended the first NeuroSeS (in Translation Neurosciences) meeting.
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The discussion focused on "New preclinical models for Alzheimer's disease". We highlight the following points:
- There are multiple animal models for Alzheimer's disease, from simpler organisms like C. elegans or Drosophila to zebrafish, lamprey, pig or ram, rodents and non-human primates.
- The most commonly used models - of rodents - have been playing a key role in the description of the pathophysiological mechanisms of the disease, however, they have intrinsic limitations, namely the inability to reproduce the pathological features of the non-familial (non-genetic) forms of the disease, which are the most prevalent ones, and the absence of age-related variables, the major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
- The strategies for developing new gene-based models that constitute risk factors in these sporadic forms, an initiative launched by NIH (see in model-ad.org), could be promising.
- Participants agreed that there is the need to adjust phenotype analysis (namely behavioural and functional imaging tests in animal models) to the tests used on patients in order to improve translation capacity.
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Additional information sources:
- Gotz et al (2018) Rodent models for Alzheimer disease, Nature Rev Neurosci 19, 583–598
- Youssef et al. (2016) Pathology of the aging brain in domestic and laboratory animals, and animal models of human neurodegenerative diseases
- www.alzforum.org/research-models/alzheimers-disease
- model-ad.org
The organisation of these meetings would like to thank Roche for its support.
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Luísa Lopes
Cláudia Faria
