Many different types of brain cell can secrete high levels of the peptide amyloid-β, which forms the brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease.
To detect molecules from single brain cells, Tracy Young-Pearse at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and her colleagues designed arrays of nanometre-sized wells. They took cells from healthy people and from individuals with familial Alzheimer's disease, reprogrammed them into stem cells and used them to derive a variety of brain-cell types, which they then placed in the wells. The authors added antibodies that would detect specific molecules.
Subsets of the brain cells secreted amyloid-β at different rates, and even non-neuronal cells such as astrocytes produced high levels. More of the cells derived from people with Alzheimer's disease secreted large amounts of the peptide compared to cells from healthy individuals.
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Brain cells in wells make amyloid. Nature 530, 132 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/530132d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/530132d
