Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. None of the available drugs can cure the disease. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) macrophages, because of their phagocytic activity, have potential as a cellular treatment for amyloid aggregation. In this study, we generated an anti-amyloid CAR hematopoietic progenitor cell line. By inducing the progenitor cell line to differentiate into macrophages, we show that the anti-amyloid CAR-Macrophage has enhanced specific phagocytic activity towards amyloid in in vitro experiments. In addition, in ex vivo experiments, anti-amyloid CAR significantly reduces the plaque load on brain slice from APP/PS1 mice when compared to a non-targeted CAR. We then transduce the progenitor cell line with GFP-luciferase and found that transduction of GFP-luciferase did not have a significant effect on the phagocytosis of amyloid. By tracking the luciferase activity in brain, we found that these CAR-macrophages can live for more than 10 days after intracranial injection.

Committee Chair

Dr. Carl DeSelm

Committee Members

Dr. Michael Vahey Dr. Abhinav Diwan Dr. Hong Chen

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Author's Department

Biomedical Engineering

Author's School

McKelvey School of Engineering

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Spring 5-20-2022

Language

English (en)

Author's ORCID

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-0232-1783

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