EARLY - A tool to tackle Alzheimer´s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) initiates with the aggregation of a small amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptide into soluble oligomers and fibrils that accumulates in the brain, to finally deposit in insoluble plaques. Even though the increased deposition of plaques is a main hallmark of AD pathology, it is not the insoluble plaques but the still-soluble oligomers and fibrils that impair synaptic function, leading to memory loss. Nowadays, AD diagnosis is based on the detection of Aβ plaques in the brain, in an advanced stage of the disease and after symptom onset. There are no tools to identify the soluble species of Aβ at the earliest stages. Thus, tools that selectively detect the soluble aggregate forms of Aβ at an early stage, are urgently needed to tackle this threatening disease. To overcome the blood-brain barrier (BBB) limitation and reach the brain, we have engineered bacteriophages (phages) known to cross the BBB, easy to manipulate at low-cost and with no tropism for mammalian cells, as vectors for peptides delivery. EARLY is a highly versatile bio-inspired solution based on phages displaying amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptides to detect early soluble Aβ oligomers/fibrils in the brain, and possibly prevent, or delay, the onset of the symptoms, consequently inhibiting AD progression.