Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by the accumulation of amyloid-beta in the brain. The purpose of this MQP is to develop a procedure for performing the Morris water swimming test in-house at WPI, and determine whether this test can distinguish WT from AD behavior at 4 months of age. The data indicate that at 4 months of age, this AD strain is indistinguishable from WT mice in the Morris test. In preparation for future in vivo tests with various neurotrophic factor peptides (which our laboratory has shown to restore neuronal survival), we compared the activity of several amyloid-beta batches on human neuronal cell morphology, and conclude that all amyloid-beta batches induced significant morphological alterations relative to untreated control cultures.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Castro, Ivy Bartolo
• Motzer, Amy Lee

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• E-project-042513-095917

Advisor

• Heilman, Destin
• Adams, David S.

Year

• 2013

Date created

• 2013-04-25

Location

• Worcester

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Biochemistry
• Biology & Biotechnology

Rights statement

• In Copyright