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Nature Medicine 14, 711–712 (1 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/nm0708-711

Regulatory RNA goes awry in Alzheimer's disease

Peter St George-Hyslop & Christian Haass

In the current issue of Nature Medicine, Faghihi et al. report that a noncoding antisense RNA against β-secretase, also known as BACE1 (β-site amyloid precursor protein (APP)-cleaving enzyme), may contribute to pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. BACE1 is a vertebrate-specific enzyme, which, together with presenilin-dependent γ-secretase, cleaves APP to generate the neurotoxic amyloid-β peptide (Aβ).