Kinetic traps and life

“It is well known that the thermodynamically stable state of proteins in a crowded environment is insoluble fibrils” [ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 119 pp. e2122078119 ’22 ].  However even under ideal conditions the time scale for their formation is hours to days [ Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol. 15, 384–396 (2014) ].  Hopefully it’s even longer (decades) for senile plaques (abeta) neurofibrils (tau) and Lewy bodies (alpha-synuclein) to form.  The fact that equilibrium takes such a long time to reach, allows rapid synthesis and degradation of proteins to avoid their aggregation.  So we live because our proteins are trapped in a less the equilibrium (metastable) state by kinetics — e.g. a kinetic trap.

Maybe the senile plaque really is a tombstone

“Thinking about pathologic changes in neurologic disease has been simplistic in the extreme.  Intially both senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles were assumed to be causative for Alzheimer’s.  However there are 3 possible explanations for any microscopic change seen in any disease.  The first is that they are causative (the initial assumption).  The second is that they are a pile of spent bullets, which the neuron uses to defend itself against the real killer.  The third is they are tombstones, the final emanations of a dying cell.” I’ve thought this way for years, and the quote is from 2012: https://luysii.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/research-on-alzheimers-disease-the-bad-news-the-good-news/.

We now have some evidence that the senile plaque may be just a tombstone marking a dead neuron. Certainly attempts to remove the plaques haven’t helped patients despite billions spent in the attempt.

A recent paper [ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 117 pp. 28625–28631 ’20 –https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/117/46/28625.full.pdf ] not only provides a new way to look at Alzheimer’s disease, but immediately suggests (to me at least) a way to test the idea. If the test proves correct, it will turn the focus of Alzheimer disease research on its ear.

Not to leave anyone behind, the senile plaque is largely made of a small fragment (the aBeta peptide 40 or 42 amino acids) from a much larger protein (the amyloid precursor protein [ APP ] — with well over 800 amino acids). Mutations in APP with the net effect of producing more aBeta are associated with familial Alzheimer’s disease, as are mutations in the enzymes chopping up APP to form Abeta (presenilin1, etc.).

The paper summarizes some evidence that the real culprit is neuronal uptake of the Abeta peptide either as a monomer, or a collection of monomers (an oligomer) or even the large aggregate of monomers seen under the microscope as the senile plaque.

The paper gives clear evidence that a 30 amino acid fragment of Abeta by itself without oligomerization can be taken up by neurons. Not only that but they found the protein on neuronal cell surface that Abeta binds to as well.

Ready to be shocked?

The protein taking Abeta into the neuron is the prion protein (PrPC) which can cause mad cow disease, wasting disease of elk and all sorts of horrible neurologic diseases among them Jakob Creutzfeldt disease.

Now to explain a bit of the jargon which follows. The amino acids making up our proteins come in two forms which are mirror images of each other. All our amino acids are of the L form, but the authors were able to synthesize the 42 amino acid Abeta peptide (Abeta42 below) using all L or all D amino acids.

It’s time to let the authors speak for themselves.

“In previous experiments we compared toxicity of L- and D-Aβ42. We found that, under conditions where L-Aβ42 reduced cell viability over 50%, D-Aβ42 was either nontoxic (PC12) or under 20% toxic . We later showed that L-Aβ is taken up approximately fivefold more efficiently than D-Aβ (28), suggesting that neuronal Aβ uptake and toxicity are linked.”

Well, if so, then the plaque is the tombstone of a neuron which took up too much Abeta.

Well how could you prove this? Any thoughts?

Cell models are nice, but animal models are probably better (although they’ve never resulted in useful therapy for stroke despite decades of trying).

Enter the 5xFAD mouse — it was engineered to have 3 mutations in APP known to cause Familial Alzheimer’s Disease + 2 more in Presenilin1 (which also cause FAD). The poor mouse starts getting Abeta deposition in its brain under two months of age (mice live about two years).

Now people aren’t really sure just what the prion protein (PrPC) actually does, and mice have been made without it (knockout mice). They are viable and fertile, and initially appear normal, but abnormalities appear as the mouse ages if you look hard enough. But still . . .

So what?

Now either knock out the PrPC gene in the 5xFAD mouse or mate the two different mouse strains.

The genes (APP, presenilin1 and PrPC) are on different chromosomes (#21, #14 and #20 respectively). So the first generation (F1) will have a normal counterpart of each of the 3 genes, along with a pathologic gene (e.g. they will be heterozygous for the 3 genes).

When members of F1 are bred with each other we’d expect some of them to have all mutant genes. If it were only 2 genes on two chromosomes, we’d expect 25% of he offspring (F2 generation) to have all abnormal genes. I’ll leave it for the mathematically inclined to figure out what the actual percentage of homozygous abnormal for all 3 would be).

What’s the point? Well, it’s easy to measure just what genes a mouse is carrying, so it’s time to look at mice with a full complement of 5xFAD genes and no PrPC.

If these mice don’t have any plaques in their brains, it’s game, set and match. Alzheimer research will shift from ways to remove the senile plaque, to ways to prevent it by inhibiting cellular uptake of the abeta peptide.

What could go wrong? Well, their could be other mechanisms and other proteins involved in getting Abeta into cells, but these could be attacked as well.

If the experiment shows what it might, this would be the best Thanksgiving present I could imagine.

So go to it. I’m an 80+ year old retired neurologist with no academic affiliation. I’d love to see someone try it.

Barking up the wrong therapeutic tree in Alzheimer’s disease

Billions have been spent by big pharma (and lost) trying to get rid of the senile plaque of Alzheimer’s disease.  The assumption has always been that the plaque is the smoking gun killing neurons.  But it’s just an assumption which a recent paper has turned on its ear [ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 116 23040 – 23049 ’19 ]

It involves a protein, likely to be a new face even to Alzheimer’s cognoscenti.  The protein is called SERF1A (in man) and MOAG-4 in yeast. It enhances amyloid formation, the major component of the senile plaque.  SERF1A is clearly doing something important as it has changed little from the humble single yeast cell to man.

The major component of the senile plaque is the aBeta peptide of 40 and/or 42 amino acids.  It polymerizes to form the amyloid of the plaque.  The initial step of amyloid formation is the hardest, getting a bunch of Abeta peptides into the right conformation (e.g. the nucleus) so others can latch on to it and form the amyloid fiber.   It is likely that the monomers and oligomers of Abeta are what is killing neurons, not the plaques, otherwise why would natural selection/evolution keep SERF1A around?

So, billions of dollars later, getting rid of the senile plaque turns out to be a bad idea. What we want to do is increase SERF1A activity, to sop up the monomers and oligomers. It is a 180 degree shift in our thinking. That’s the executive summary, now for the fascinating chemistry involved.

First the structure of SERF1A — that is to say its amino acid sequence.  (For the nonChemists — proteins are linear string of amino acids, just as a word is a linear string of characters — the order is quite important — just as united and untied mean two very different things). There are only 68 amino acids in SERF1A of which 14 are lysine 9 are arginine 5 Glutamic acid and 5 Aspartic acid.  That’s interesting in itself, as we have 20 different amino acids, and if they occurred randomly you’d expect about 3 -4 of each.  The mathematicians among you should enjoy figuring out just how improbable this compared to random assortment. So just four amino acids account for 33 of the 68 in SERF1A  Even more interesting is the fact that all 4 are charged at body pH — lysine and arginine are positively charged because their nitrogen picks up protons, and glutamic and aspartic acid are negatively charged  giving up the proton.

This means that positive and negative can bind to each other (something energetically quite favorable).  How many ways are there for the 10 acids to bind to the 23 bases?  Just 23 x 22 x 21 X 20 X 19 X 18 x 17 x 16 x 15 x 14 or roughly 20^10 ways.  This means that SERF1A doesn’t have a single structure, but many of them.  It is basically a disordered protein.

The paper shows exactly this, that several conformations of SERF1 are seen in solution, and that it binds to Abeta forming a ‘fuzzy complex’, in which the number of Abetas and SERF1s are not fixed — e.g. there is no fixed stoichiometry — something chemists are going to have to learn to deal with — see — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2018/12/16/bye-bye-stoichiometry/.  Also different conformations of SERF1A are present in the fuzzy complex, explaining why it has such a peculiar amino acid composition.  Clever no?  Let’s hear it for the blind watchmaker or whatever you want to call it.

The paper shows that SERF1 increases the rate at which Abeta forms the nucleus of the amyloid fiber.  It does not help the fiber grow.  This means that the fiber is good and the monomers and oligomers are bad.  Not only that but SERF1 has exactly the same effect with alpha-synuclein, the main protein of the Lewy body of Parkinsonism.

So the paper represents a huge paradigm shift in our understanding of the cause of at least 2 bad neurological diseases.   Even more importantly, the paper suggests a completely new way to attack them.

Technology marches on — or does it?

Technology marches on — perhaps.  But it certainly did in the following Alzheimer’s research [ Neuron vol. 104 pp. 256 – 270 ’19 ] .  The work used (1) CRISPR (2) iPSCs (3) transcriptomics (4) translatomics to study Alzheimer’s.  Almost none of this would have been possible 10 years ago.

Presently over 200 mutations are known in (1) the amyloid precursor protein — APP (2) presenilin1 (3) presenilin2.  The presenilins are components of the gamma secretase complex which cleaves APP on the way to the way to the major components of the senile plaque, Abeta40 and Abeta42.

There’s a lot of nomenclature, so here’s a brief review.  The amyloid precursor protein (APP) comes in 3 isoforms containing 770, 751 and 695 amino acids.  APP is embedded in the plasma membrane with most of the amino acids extracellular.  The crucial enzyme for breaking APP down is gamma secretase, which cleaves APP inside the membrane.  Gamma secretase is made of 4 proteins, 2 of which are the presenilins.  Cleavage results in a small carboxy terminal fragment (which the paper calls beta-CTF) and a large amino terminal fragment. If beta secretase (another enzyme) cleaves the amino terminal fragment Abeta40 and Abeta42 are formed.  If alpha secretase (a third enzyme) cleaves the amino terminal fragment — Abeta42 is not formed.   Got all that?

Where do CRISPR and iPSCs come in?  iPSC stands for induced pluripotent stem cells, which can be made from cells in your skin (but not easily).  Subsequently adding the appropriate witches brew can cause them to differentiate into a variety of cells — cortical neurons in this case.

CRISPR was then used to introduce mutations characteristic of familial Alzheimer’s disease into either APP or presenilin1.  Some 16 cell lines each containing a different familial Alzheimer disease mutation were formed.

Then the iPSCs were differentiated into cortical neurons, and the mRNAs (transcriptomics) and proteins made from them (translatomics) were studied.

Certainly a technological tour de force.

What did they find?  Well for the APP and the presenilin1 mutations had effects on Abeta peptide production (but they differered).  Both however increased the accumulation of beta-CTF.  This could be ‘rescued’ by inhibition of beta-secretase — but unfortunately clinical trials have not shown beta-secretase inhibitors to be helpful.

What did increased beta-CTF actually do — there was enlargement of early endosomes in all the cell lines.   How this produces Alzheimer’s disease is anyone’s guess.

Also quite interesting, is the fact that translatomics and transcriptomics of all 16 cell lines showed ‘dysregulation’ of genes which have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease risk — these include APOE, CLU and SORL1.

Certainly a masterpiece of technological virtuosity.

So technology gives us bigger and better results

Or does it?

There was a very interesting paper on the effect of sleep on cerebrospinal fluid and blood flow in the brain [ Science vol. 366 pp. 372 – 373 ’19 ] It contained the following statement –”

During slow wave sleep, the cerebral blood flow is reduced by 25%, which lowers cerebral blood volume  by ~10%.  The reference for this statement was work done in 1991.

I thought this was a bit outre, so I wrote one of the authors.

Dr. X “Isn’t there something more current (and presumably more accurate) than reference #3 on cerebral blood flow in sleep?  If there isn’t, the work should be repeated”

I got the following back “The old studies are very precise, more precise than current studies.”

Go figure.

Will flickering light treat Alzheimer’s disease ? — Take II

30 months ago, a fascinating paper appeared in which flickering light improved a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.  The authors (MIT mostly) have continued to extend their work.   Here is a copy of the post back then.  Their new work is summarized after the ****

Big pharma has spent zillions trying to rid the brain of senile plaques, to no avail. A recent paper shows that light flickering at 40 cycles/second (40 Hertz) can do it — this is not a misprint [ Nature vol. 540 pp. 207 – 208, 230 – 235 ’16 ]. As most know the main component of the senile plaque of Alzheimer’s disease is a fragment (called the aBeta peptide) of the amyloid precursor protein (APP).

The most interesting part of the paper showed that just an hour or so of light flickering at 40 Hertz temporarily reduced the amount of Abeta peptide in visual cortex of aged mice. Nothing invasive about that.

Should we try this in people? How harmful could it be? Unfortunately the visual cortex is relatively unaffected in Alzheimer’s disease — the disease starts deep inside the head in the medial temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus — the link shows just how deep it is -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus#/media/File:MRI_Location_Hippocampus_up..png

You might be able to do this through the squamous portion of the temporal bone which is just in front of and above the ear. It’s very thin, and ultrasound probes placed here can ‘see’ blood flowing in arteries in this region. Another way to do it might be a light source placed in the mouth.

The technical aspects of the paper are fascinating and will be described later.

First, what could go wrong?

The work shows that the flickering light activates the scavenger cells of the brain (microglia) and then eat the extracellular plaques. However that may not be a good thing as microglia could attack normal cells. In particular they are important in the remodeling of the dendritic tree (notably dendritic spines) that occurs during experience and learning.

Second, why wouldn’t it work? So much has been spent on trying to remove abeta, that serious doubt exists as to whether excessive extracellular Abeta causes Alzheimer’s and even if it does, would removing it be helpful.

Now for some fascinating detail on the paper (for the cognoscenti)

They used a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (the 5XFAD mouse). This poor creature has 3 different mutations associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the amyloid precursor protein (APP) — these are the Swedish (K670B), Florida (I716V) and London (V717I). If that wasn’t enough there are two Alzheimer associated mutations in one of the enzymes that processes the APP into Abeta (M146L, L286V) — using the single letter amino acid code –http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/dbbrowser/c32/aacode.html.hy1. Then the whole mess is put under control of a promoter particularly active in mice (the Thy1 promoter). This results in high expression of the two mutant proteins.

So the poor mice get lots of senile plaques (particularly in the hippocampus) at an early age.

The first experiment was even more complicated, as a way was found to put channelrhodopsin into a set of hippocampal interneurons (this is optogenetics and hardly simple). Exposing the channel to light causes it to open the membrane to depolarize and the neuron to fire. Then fiberoptics were used to stimulate these neurons at 40 Hertz and the effects on the plaques were noted. Clearly a lot of work and the authors (and grad students) deserve our thanks.

Light at 8 Hertz did nothing to the plaques. I couldn’t find what other stimulation frequencies were used (assuming they were tried).

It would be wonderful if something so simple could help these people.

For other ideas about Alzheimer’s using physics rather than chemistry please see — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/could-alzheimers-disease-be-a-problem-in-physics-rather-than-chemistry/

****

The new work appears in two papers.

First [ Cell vol. 1777 pp. 256 – 271 ’19 ] 7 days of auditory tone stimuli at 40 cycles/second (40 Hertz) for just one hour a day reduced amyloid in the auditory cortex of the same pathetic mice described above (the 5XFAD mice).  They call this GENUS (Gamma ENtrainment Using sensory Stimuli).  Neurologists love to name frequencies in the EEG, and the 40 Hertz is in the gamma range.

The second paper [ Neuron vol. 102 pp. 929 – 943 ’19 ] is even better.  Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by two types of pathology — neurofibrillary tangles inside the remaining neurons and the senile plaque outside them.  The tangles are made of the tau protein, the plaques mostly of fragments of the amyloid precursor protein (APP).  The 5XFAD mouse had 3 separate mutations in the APP and two more in the enzyme that chops it up.

The present work looked at the other half of Alzheimer’s the neurofibrillary tangle.  They had mice with the P301S mutation in the tau protein found in a hereditary form of dementia (not Alzheimer’s) and also with excessive levels of CK-p25 which also results in tangles.

Again chronic visual GENUS worked in this (completely different) model of neurodegeneration.

This is very exciting stuff, but I’d love to see a different group of researchers reproduce it.  Also billions have been spent and lost on promising treatments of Alzheimer’s (all based on animal work).

Probably someone is trying it out on themselves or their spouse.  A EE friend notes that engineers have been trying homebrew transcranial magnetic and current stimulation using themselves or someone close as guineapigs for years.

How to treat Alzheimer’s disease

Let’s say you’re an engineer whose wife has early Alzheimer’s disease.  Would you build the following noninvasive device to remove her plaques?  [ Cell vol. 177 pp. 256 – 271 ’19 ] showed that it worked in mice.

Addendum 18 April — A reader requested a better way to get to the paper — Here is the title — “Multisensory Gamma Stimulation Ameliorates Alzheimer’s Associated Pathology and Improves Cognition”.  It is from MIT — here is the person to correspond to  —Correspondence — lhtsai@mit.edu

The device emits sound and light 40 times a second.  Exposing mice  to this 1 hour a day for a week decreased the number of senile plaques all over the brain (not just in the auditory and visual cortex) and improved their cognition as well.

With apologies to Steinbeck, mice are not men (particularly these mice which carry 5 different mutations which cause Alzheimer’s disease in man).  Animal cognition is not human cognition.  How well do you think Einstein would have done running a maze looking for food?

I had written about the authors’ earlier work and a copy of that post will be found after the ****.

What makes this work exciting is that plaque reduction was seen not only  in the visual cortex (which is pretty much unaffected in Alzheimer’s) but in the hippocampus (which is devastated) and the frontal lobes (also severely affected).  Interestingly, to be effective, both sound and light had to be given simultaneously

Here are the details about the stimuli  —

“Animals were presented with 10 s stimulation blocks interleaved with 10 s baseline periods. Stimulation blocks rotated between auditory-only or auditory and visual stimulation at 20 Hz, 40 Hz, 80 Hz, or with random stimulation (pulses were delivered with randomized inter-pulse intervals determined from a uniform distribution with an average interval of 25 ms). Stimuli blocks were interleaved to ensure the results observed were not due to changes over time in the neuronal response. 10 s long stimulus blocks were used to reduce the influence of onset effects, and to examine neural responses to prolonged rhythmic stimulation. All auditory pulses were 1 ms-long 10 kHz tones. All visual pulses were 50% duty cycle of the stimulation frequency (25 ms, 12.5 ms, or 6.25 ms in length). For combined stimulation, auditory and visual pulses were aligned to the onset of each pulse.”

The device should not require approval by the FDA unless a therapeutic claim is made, and it’s about as noninvasive as it could be.

What could go wrong?  Well a flickering light could trigger seizures in people subject to photic epilepsy (under 1/1,000).

Certainly Claude Shannon who died of Alzheimer’s disease, would have had one built, as would Fields medal winner Daniel Quillen had he not passed away 8 years ago.

Here is the post of 12/16 which has more detail

 

*****

Will flickering light treat Alzheimer’s disease ?

Big pharma has spent zillions trying to rid the brain of senile plaques, to no avail. A recent paper shows that light flickering at 40 cycles/second (40 Hertz) can do it — this is not a misprint [ Nature vol. 540 pp. 207 – 208, 230 – 235 ’16 ]. As most know the main component of the senile plaque of Alzheimer’s disease is a fragment (called the aBeta peptide) of the amyloid precursor protein (APP).

The most interesting part of the paper showed that just an hour or so of light flickering at 40 Hertz temporarily reduced the amount of Abeta peptide in visual cortex of aged mice. Nothing invasive about that.

Should we try this in people? How harmful could it be? Unfortunately the visual cortex is relatively unaffected in Alzheimer’s disease — the disease starts deep inside the head in the medial temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus — the link shows just how deep it is -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus#/media/File:MRI_Location_Hippocampus_up..png

You might be able to do this through the squamous portion of the temporal bone which is just in front of and above the ear. It’s very thin, and ultrasound probes placed here can ‘see’ blood flowing in arteries in this region. Another way to do it might be a light source placed in the mouth.

The technical aspects of the paper are fascinating and will be described later.

First, what could go wrong?

The work shows that the flickering light activates the scavenger cells of the brain (microglia) and then eat the extracellular plaques. However that may not be a good thing as microglia could attack normal cells. In particular they are important in the remodeling of the dendritic tree (notably dendritic spines) that occurs during experience and learning.

Second, why wouldn’t it work? So much has been spent on trying to remove abeta, that serious doubt exists as to whether excessive extracellular Abeta causes Alzheimer’s and even if it does, would removing it be helpful.

Now for some fascinating detail on the paper (for the cognoscenti)

They used a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (the 5XFAD mouse). This poor creature has 3 different mutations associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the amyloid precursor protein (APP) — these are the Swedish (K670B), Florida (I716V) and London (V717I). If that wasn’t enough there are two Alzheimer associated mutations in one of the enzymes that processes the APP into Abeta (M146L, L286V) — using the single letter amino acid code –http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/dbbrowser/c32/aacode.html.hy1. Then the whole mess is put under control of a promoter particularly active in mice (the Thy1 promoter). This results in high expression of the two mutant proteins.

So the poor mice get lots of senile plaques (particularly in the hippocampus) at an early age.

The first experiment was even more complicated, as a way was found to put channelrhodopsin into a set of hippocampal interneurons (this is optogenetics and hardly simple). Exposing the channel to light causes it to open the membrane to depolarize and the neuron to fire. Then fiberoptics were used to stimulate these neurons at 40 Hertz and the effects on the plaques were noted. Clearly a lot of work and the authors (and grad students) deserve our thanks.

Light at 8 Hertz did nothing to the plaques. I couldn’t find what other stimulation frequencies were used (assuming they were tried).

It would be wonderful if something so simple could help these people.

For other ideas about Alzheimer’s using physics rather than chemistry please see — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/could-alzheimers-disease-be-a-problem-in-physics-rather-than-chemistry/

Cellular senescence (again, again)

As well as being involved in normal cellular function, wound healing, embryology, and warding off cancer, cellular senescence may be involved in one form of neurodegeneration according to [ Nature vol. 562 pp. 503 – 504, 578 – 582 ’18 ]

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by two findings visible with only a light microscope — the senile plaque which occurs outside neurons, and the neurofibrillary tangle (which occurs inside them).  The latter is due to accumulation of excessively phosphorylated tau protein.  A few mutations in the tau protein are known to cause neurodegeneration.  One such is the substitution of serine (S) for proline (P) at position #301 in tau (e. g. the P301S mutation).

Transgenic expression of the mutant tau in mice mimics the human illness.  Long before neurofibrillary tangles appear in neurons, glial cells (which don’t express much tau and never have neurofibrillary tangles) develop cellular senescence.  Neurons don’t show this.

p16^INK4a is a transcription factor which turns on cellular senescence, leading to expression of a bunch of proteins known as the Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype (SASP).  It was elevated in glia.  The authors were able to prevent the neurodegeneration using another genetic tool, which produced cell death in cells expression p16^INK4a.  There was fewer neurofibrillary tangles in the animals.

The nature of the neural signal to glia causing senescence isn’t known at this point.  How glia signal back also isn’t known.

So are drugs killing senescence cells (senolytics) a possible treatment of neurodegeneration?  Stay tuned.

As readers of this blog well know, I’ve been flogging an idea of mine — that excessive cellular senescence with release of SASP products is behind the faatigue of chronic fatigue syndrome.   I’d love it if someone would measure p16^INK4a in these people — it’s so easy to do, and if the idea is correct would lead to a rational treatment for some with the disorder.

Neurodegeneration is a far larger fish to fry than CFS, and I hope people with it don’t get lost in the shuffle.

Here’s the idea again

Not a great way to end 2017

2017 ended with a rejection of the following letter to PNAS.

As a clinical neurologist with a long standing interest in muscular dystrophy(1), I was referred many patients who turned out to have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) . Medicine, then and now, has no effective treatment for CFS.

A paper (2) cited In an excellent review of cellular senescence (3) was able to correlate an intracellular marker of senescence (p16^INK4a) with the degree of fatigue experienced by patients undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. Chemotherapy induces cellular senescence, and the fatigue was thought to come from the various cytokines secreted by senescent cells (Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype—SASP) It seems logical to me to test CFS patients for p16^INK4a (4).
I suggested this to the senior author; however, he was nominated as head of the National Cancer Institute just 9 days later. There the matter rested until the paper of Montoya et al. (5) appeared in July. I looked up the 74 individual elements of the SASP and found that 9 were among the 17 cytokines whose levels correlated with the degree of fatigue in CFS. However, this is not statistically significant as Montoya looked at 51 cytokines altogether.

In October, an article(6) on the possibility of killing senescent cells to prevent aging contained a statement that Judith Campisi’s group (which has done much of the work on SASP) had identified “hundreds of proteins involved in SASPs”. (These results have not yet been published.) It is certainly possible that many more of Montoya’s 17 cytokines are among them.

If this is the case, a rational therapy for CFS is immediately apparent; namely, the senolytics, a class of drugs which kills senescent cells. A few senolytics are currently available clinically and many more are under development as a way to attack the aging process (6).

If Montoya still has cells from the patients in the study, measuring p16^INK4a could prove or disprove the idea. However, any oncology service could do the test. If the idea proves correct, then there would be a way to treat the debilitating fatigue of both chemotherapy and CFS—not to mention the many more medical conditions in which severe fatigue is found.
Chemotherapy is a systemic process, producing senescent cells everywhere, which is why DeMaria (2) was able to use circulating blood cells to measure p16^INK4a. It is possible that the senescent cells producing SASP in CFS are confined to one tissue; in which case testing blood for p16^INK4a would fail. (That would be similar to pheochromocytoma cells, in which a few localized cells produce major systemic effects.)

Although senolytics might provide symptomatic treatment (something worthwhile having since medicine presently has nothing for the CFS patient), we’d still be in the dark about what initially caused the cells to become senescent. But this would be research well worth pursuing.

Anyone intrigued by the idea should feel free to go ahead and test it. I am a retired neurologist with no academic affiliation, lacking the means to test it.
References

1 Robinson, L (1979) Split genes and musclar dystrophy. Muscle Nerve 2: 458 – 464

2. He S, Sharpless N (2017) Senescence in Health and Disease. Cell 170: 1000 – 1011

3. Demaria M, et al. (2014) Cellular senescence promotes adverse effects of chemotherapy and cancer relapse. Cancer Discov. 7: 165 – 176

4. https://luysii.wordpress.com/2017/09/04/is-the-era-of-precision-medicine-for-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-at-hand/

5. Montoya JG, et al., (2017) Cytokine signature associated with disease severity in chronic fatigue syndrome patients, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 114: E7150-E7158

6. Scudellari M, (2017) To stay young, kill zombie cells Nature 551: 448 – 450

Is a rational treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome at hand?

If an idea of mine is correct, it is possible that some patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) can be treated with specific medications based on the results of a few blood tests. This is precision medicine at its finest.  The data to test this idea has already been acquired, and nothing further needs to be done except to analyze it.

Athough the initial impetus for the idea happened only 3 months ago, there have been enough twists and turns that the best way explanation is by a timeline.

First some background:

As a neurologist I saw a lot of people who were chronically tired and fatigued, because neurologists deal with muscle weakness and diseases like myasthenia gravis which are associated with fatigue.  Once I ruled out neuromuscular disease as a cause, I had nothing to offer then (nor did medicine).  Some of these patients were undoubtedly neurotic, but there was little question in my mind that many others had something wrong that medicine just hadn’t figured out yet — not that it hasn’t been trying.

Infections of almost any sort are associated with fatigue, most probably caused by components of the inflammatory response.  Anyone who’s gone through mononucleosis knows this.    The long search for an infectious cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has had its ups and downs — particularly downs — see https://luysii.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/evil-scientists-create-virus-causing-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-in-lab/

At worst many people with these symptoms are written off as crazy; at best, diagnosed as depressed  and given antidepressants.  The fact that many of those given antidepressants feel better is far from conclusive, since most patients with chronic illnesses are somewhat depressed.

The 1 June 2017 Cell had a long and interesting review of cellular senescence by Norman Sharpless [ vol. 169 pp. 1000 – 1011 ].  Here is some background about the entity.  If you are familiar with senescent cell biology skip to the paragraph marked **** below

Cells die in a variety of ways.  Some are killed (by infections, heat, toxins).  This is called necrosis. Others voluntarily commit suicide (this is called apoptosis).   Sometimes a cell under stress undergoes cellular senescence, a state in which it doesn’t die, but doesn’t reproduce either.  Such cells have a variety of biochemical characteristics — they are resistant to apoptosis, they express molecules which prevent them from proliferating and — most importantly — they secrete a variety of proinflammatory molecules collectively called the Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype — SASP).

At first the very existence of the senescent state was questioned, but exist it does.  What is it good for?  Theories abound, one being that mutation is one cause of stress, and stopping mutated cells from proliferating prevents cancer. However, senescent cells are found during fetal life; and they are almost certainly important in wound healing.  They are known to accumulate the older you get and some think they cause aging.

Many stresses induce cellular senescence of which mutation is but one.  The one of interest to us is chemotherapy for cancer, something obviously good as a cancer cell turned senescent has stopped proliferating.   If you know anyone who has undergone chemotherapy, you know that fatigue is almost invariable.

****

One biochemical characteristic of the senescent cell is increased levels of a protein called p16^INK4a, which helps stop cellular proliferation.  While p16^INK4a can easily be measured in tissue biopsies, tissue biopsies are inherently invasive. Fortunately, p16^INK4a can also be measured in circulating blood cells.

What caught my eye in the Cell paper was a reference to a paper about cancer [ Cancer Discov. vol. 7 pp. 165 – 176 ’17 ] by M. Demaria, in which the levels of p16^INK4a correlated with the degree of fatigue after chemotherapy.  The more p16^INK4a in the blood cells the greater the fatigue.

I may have been the only reader of both papers with clinical experience wth chronic fatigue syndrome.  It is extremely difficult to objectively measure a subjective complaint such as fatigue.

As an example of the difficulty in correlating subjective complaints with objective findings, consider the nearly uniform complaint of difficulty thinking in depression, with how such patients actually perform on cognitive tests — e. g. there is  little if any correlation between complaints and actual performance — here’s a current reference — Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 3901(2017) —  doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04353.

If the results of the Cancer paper could be replicated, p16^INK4 would be the first objective measure of a patient’s individual sense of fatigue.

So I wrote both authors, suggesting that the p16^INK4a test be run on a collection of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients. Both authors replied quickly, but thought the problem would be acquiring patients.  Demaria said that Sharpless had a lab all set up to do the test.

Then fate (in the form of Donald Trump) supervened.  A mere 9 days after the Cell issue appeared, Sharpless was nominated to be the head of the National Cancer Institute by President Trump.  This meant Dr. Sharpless had far bigger fish to fry, and he would have to sever all connection with his lab because of conflict of interest considerations.

I also contacted a patient organization for chronic fatigue syndrome without much success.  Their science advisor never responded.

There matters stood until 22 August when a paper and an editorial about it came out [ Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 114 pp. 8914 – 8916, E7150 – E7158 ’17 ].  The paper represented a tremendous amount of data (and work).  The blood levels of 51 cytokines (measures of inflammation) and adipokines (hormones released by fat) were measured in both 192 patients with CFS (which can only be defined by symptoms) and 293 healthy controls matched for age and gender.

In this paper, levels of 17 of the 51 cytokines correlated with severity of CFS. This is a striking similarity with the way the p16^INK4 levels correlated with the degree of fatigue after chemotherapy).  So I looked up the individual elements of the SASP (which can be found in Annu Rev Pathol. 21010; 5: 99–118.)  There are 74 of them. I wondered how many of the 51 cytokines measured in the PNAS paper were in the SASP.  This is trickier than it sounds as many cytokines have far more than one name.  The bottom line is that 20 SASPs are in the 51 cytokines measured in the paper.

If the fatigue of CFS is due to senescent cells and the SASPs  they release, then they should be over-represented in the 17 of the 51 cytokines correlating with symptom severity.  Well they are; 9 out of the 17 are SASP.  However although suggestive, this increase is not statistically significant (according to my consultants on Math Stack Exchange).

After wrote I him about the new work, Dr. Sharpless noted that CFS is almost certainly a heterogeneous condition. As a clinician with decades of experience, I’ve certainly did see some of the more larcenous members of our society who used any subjective diagnosis to be compensated, as well as a variety of individuals who just wanted to withdraw from society, for whatever reason. They are undoubtedly contaminating the sample in the paper. Dr. Sharpless thought the idea, while interesting, would be very difficult to test.

But it wouldn’t at all.  Not with the immense amount of data in the PNAS paper.

Here’s how. Take each of the 9 SASPs and see how their levels correlate with the other 16 (in each of the 192 CSF patients). If they correlate better with SASPs than with nonSASPs, than this would be evidence for senescent cells being the cause some cases of CFS. In particular, patients with a high level of any of the 9 SASPs should be studied for such correlations.  Doing so should weed out some of the heterogeneity of the 192 patients in the sample.

This is why the idea is testable and, even better, falsifiable, making it a scientific hypothesis (a la Karl Popper).  The data to refute it is in the possession of the authors of the paper.

Suppose the idea turns out to be correct and that some patients with CFS are in fact that way because, for whatever reason, they have a lot of senescent cells releasing SASPs.

This would mean that it would be time to start trials of senolyic drugs which destroy senescent cells on the group with elevated SASPs. Fortunately, a few senolytics are currently inc linical use.  This would be precision medicine at its finest.

Being able to alleviate the symptoms of CFS would be worthwhile in itself, but SASP levels could also be run on all sorts of conditions associated with fatigue, most notably infection. This might lead to symptomatic treatment at least.  Having gone through mono in med school, I would have loved to have been able to take something to keep me from falling asleep all the time.

Will acyclovir be a treatment for Alzheimer’s ?

When I was a first year medical student my aunt died of probable acute herpes simplex encephalitis at Columbia University Hospital in New York City.  That was 55 years ago and her daughters (teenagers at the time) still bear the scars.  Later, as a neurologist I treated it, and after 1977, when acyclovir, which effectively treats herpes encephalitis came out, I would always wonder if acyclovir would have saved her.

The drug is simplicity itself.  It’s just guanosine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanosine) with two of the carbons of the ribose missing.  Herpesviruses have an enzyme which forms the triphosphate incorporating it into its DNA killing the virus.  Well, actually we have the same enzyme, but the virus’s enzyme is 3,000,000 times more efficient than ours, so acyclovir is relatively nontoxic to us.  People with compromised renal function shouldn’t take it.

What does this have to do with Alzheimer’s disease?  The senile plaque of Alzheimers is mostly the aBeta peptide (39 – 43 amino acids) from the amyloid precursor protein (APP).  This has been known for years, and my notes on various papers about over the years contain 150,000 characters or so.

Even so, there’s a lot we don’t understand about APP and the abeta peptide — e.g. what are they doing for us?  You can knockout the APP gene in mice and they appear normal and fertile.  The paper cited below notes that APP has been present in various species for the past 400,000,000 years of evolutionary time remaining pretty much unchanged throughout, so it is probably doing something useful

A recent paper in Neuron (vol. 99 pp. 56 – 63 ’18) noted that aBeta is actually an antimicrobial peptide.  When exposed to herpes simplex it binds to glycoproteins on its surface and then  oligomerizes forming amyloid (just like in the senile plaque) trapping the virus.  Abeta will protect mice against herpes simplex 1 (HSV1) encephalitis.  Even more important — infection of the mice with HSV1 induced abeta production in their brains.

People have been claiming infections as the cause of just about every neurodegeneration since I’ve been a neurologist, and papers have been written about HSV1 and Alzheimer’s.

Which brings me to the second paper (ibid. pp. 64 – 82) that looked for the viral RNAs and DNAs in over 900 or so brains, some with and some without Alzheimer’s.  They didn’t find HSV but they found two other herpes viruses known to infect man (HHV6, HHV7 — which cause roseola infantum).  Humans are subject to infection with 8 different herpes virus (Epstein Barr — mononucleosis, H. Zoster — chickenpox etc. etc.).   Just about everyone of us has herpes virus in latent form in the trigeminal ganglion — which gets sensory information from our faces.

So could some sort of indolent herpesvirus infection be triggering abeta peptide production as a defense with the senile plaque as a byproduct?  That being the case, given the minimal benefits of any therapy we have for Alzheimer’s disease so far, why not try acyclovir (Zovirax) on Alzheimer’s.

I find it remarkable that neither paper mentioned this possibility, or even discussed any of the antivirals active against herpesviruses.

A pile of spent bullets — take II

I can tell you after being in neurology for 50 years that back in the day every microscopic inclusion found in neurologic disease was thought to be causative.  This was certainly true for the senile plaque of Alzheimer’s disease and the Lewy body of Parkinsonism.  Interestingly, the protein inclusions in ALS weren’t noticed for decades.

However there are 3 possible explanations for any microscopic change seen in any disease.  The first is that they are causative (the initial assumption).  The second is that they are a pile of spent bullets, which the neuron uses to defend itself against the real killer.  The third is they are tombstones, the final emanations of a dying cell, a marker for the cause of death rather than the cause itself.

An earlier post concerned work that implied that the visible aggregates of alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease were protective rather than destructive — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/are-the-inclusions-found-in-neurologic-disease-attempts-at-defense-rather-then-the-cause/.

Comes now Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 115 pp. 4661 – 4665 ’18 on Superoxide Dismutase 1 (SOD1) and ALS. Familial ALS is fortunately less common than the sporadic form (under 10% in my experience).  Mutations in SOD1 are found in the familial form.  The protein contains 153 amino acids, and as 6/16 160 different mutations in SOD1 have been found.  Since each codon can contain only 3 mutations from the wild type, this implies that, at a minimum,  53/153 codons of the protein have been mutated causing the disease.  Sadly, there is no general agreement on what the mutations actually do — impair SOD1 function, produce a new SOD1 function, cause SOD1 to bind to something else modifying that function etc. etc.  A search on Google Scholar for SOD1 and ALS produced 28,000 hits.

SOD1 exists as a soluble trimer of proteins or the fibrillar aggregate.   Knowing the structure of the trimer, the authors produced mutants which stabilized the trimer (Glycine 147 –> Proline) making aggregate formation less likely and two mutations (Asparagine 53 –> Isoleucine, and Aspartic acid 101 –> Isoleucine) which destabilized the trimer making aggregate formation more likely.  Then they threw the various mutant proteins at neuroblastoma cells and looked for toxicity.

The trimer stabilizing mutant  (Glycine 147 –> Proline) was toxic and the destabilizing mutants  (Asparagine 53 –> Isoleucine, and Aspartic acid 101 –> Isoleucine)  actually improved survival of the cells.  The trimer stabilizing mutant was actually more toxic to the cells than two naturally occurring SOD1 mutants which cause ALS in people (Alanine 4 –> Valine, Glycine 93 –> Alanine).  Clearly with these two something steric is going on.

So, in this experimental system at least, the aggregate is protective and what you can’t see (microscopically) is what kills cells.

Are the inclusions found in neurologic disease attempts at defense rather then the cause?

Thinking about pathologic changes in neurologic disease has been simplistic in the extreme.  Intially both senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles were assumed to be causative for Alzheimer’s.  However there are 3 possible explanations for any microscopic change seen in any disease.  The first is that they are causative (the initial assumption).  The second is that they are a pile of spent bullets, which the neuron uses to defend itself against the real killer.  The third is they are tombstones, the final emanations of a dying cell.

A fascinating recent paper [ Neuron vol. 97 pp. 3 – 4, 108 – 124 ’18 ] http://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(17)31089-9.pdf gives strong evidence that some inclusions can be defensive rather than toxic.  It contains the following;

“In these studies, we found that formation of large inclusions was correlated with protection from a-synuclein toxicity”

The paper is likely to be a landmark because it ties two neurologic diseases (Parkinsonism and Alzheimer’s) together by showing that they may due to toxicity produced by single mechanism — inhibition of mitochondrial function.

Basically, the paper says that overproduction of alpha synuclein (the major component of the Lewy body inclusion of Parkinsonism) and tau (the major component of the neurofibrillary tangle of Alzheimer’s disease) produce death and destruction by interfering with mitochondria.  The mechanism is mislocalization of a protein called Drp1 which is important in mitochondrial function (it’s required for mitochondrial fission).

Actin isn’t just found in muscle, but is part of the cytoskeleton of every cell.  Alpha-synuclein is held to alter actin dynamics by binding to another protein called spectrin (which also binds to actin).  The net effect is to mislocalize Drp1 so it doesn’t bind to mitochondria where it is needed.  It isn’t clear to me from reading the paper, just where the Drp1 actually goes.

In any event overexpressing spectrin causes the alpha-synuclein to bind to it forming inclusions and protecting the cells.

There is a similar mechanism proposed for tau, and co-expressing alpha synuclein with Tau significantly enhances the toxicity of both models of tau toxicity which implies that they work by a common mechanism.

Grains of salt are required because the organism used for the model is the humble fruitfly (Drosophila).