Figure 3.

Arctic and Swedish Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain extracts induce distinct pathologies in APP23 mice. (A) Intracerebral inoculation of APP23 mice with brain extract from an AD patient with the Swedish APP mutation, which generates wild-type Aβ, or brain extract from an AD patient with the Arctic APP mutation, which generates E22G-mutant Aβ. At 11 mo postinoculation, induced Aβ cerebral amyloid angiopathy is present in the thalamus (4G8 immunostaining). Whereas mice inoculated with Swedish AD extract exhibited a thin layer of Aβ deposition surrounding blood vessels (black arrows), many of the blood vessels in mice inoculated with Arctic AD extract were surrounded by thick, “furry” Aβ deposits (red arrows). (B) Similar morphological differences in Aβ cerebral amyloid angiopathy were observed at 11 mo postinoculation of APP23 mice with APP23-passaged Swedish and Arctic AD extract, indicating that Aβ strain-specified properties are serially transmissible. Scale bars, 100 µm. (This figure has been adapted from Watts et al. 2014, with permission from the National Academy of Sciences © 2014.)