Steven Paul - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Steven Paul

Neuropsychopharmacology

In contrast to most fields of medicine, progress to discover and develop new and improved psychia... more In contrast to most fields of medicine, progress to discover and develop new and improved psychiatric drugs has been slow and disappointing. The vast majority of currently prescribed drugs to treat schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders are arguably no more effective than the first generation of psychiatric drugs introduced well over 50 years ago. With only a few exceptions current psychiatric drugs work via the same fundamental mechanisms of action as first-generation agents. Here we describe the reasons for this slow progress and outline a number of areas of research that involve a greater reliance on experimental therapeutics utilizing recent advances in neuroscience to better understand disease biology. We exemplify the potential impact of these areas of research focus with several recent examples of novel agents that have emerged and which support our optimism that newer, more effective and better tolerated agents, are on the horizon. Together with existing drugs these newer...

Scientific Reports, 2019

There is well-documented evidence of brain network differences between individuals with Alzheimer... more There is well-documented evidence of brain network differences between individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and healthy controls (HC). To date, imaging studies investigating brain networks in these populations have typically been cross-sectional, and the reproducibility of such findings is somewhat unclear. In a novel study, we use the longitudinal ADNI data on the whole brain to jointly compute the brain network at baseline and one-year using a state of the art approach that pools information across both time points to yield distinct visit-specific networks for the AD and HC cohorts, resulting in more accurate inferences. We perform a multiscale comparison of the AD and HC networks in terms of global network metrics as well as at the more granular level of resting state networks defined under a whole brain parcellation. Our analysis illustrates a decrease in small-worldedness in the AD group at both the time points and also identifies more local network features and hub nodes ...

Nature communications, Jan 21, 2016

Multifactorial mechanisms underlying late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) are poorly charact... more Multifactorial mechanisms underlying late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) are poorly characterized from an integrative perspective. Here spatiotemporal alterations in brain amyloid-β deposition, metabolism, vascular, functional activity at rest, structural properties, cognitive integrity and peripheral proteins levels are characterized in relation to LOAD progression. We analyse over 7,700 brain images and tens of plasma and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Through a multifactorial data-driven analysis, we obtain dynamic LOAD-abnormality indices for all biomarkers, and a tentative temporal ordering of disease progression. Imaging results suggest that intra-brain vascular dysregulation is an early pathological event during disease development. Cognitive decline is noticeable from initial LOAD stages, suggesting early memory deficit associated with the primary disease factors. High abnormality levels are also observed...

Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2008

Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2007

Annals of Neurology, 2010

scriptions of patients who likely had anti-NMDAR encephalitis. In 1981, DeLong et al reported 2 c... more scriptions of patients who likely had anti-NMDAR encephalitis. In 1981, DeLong et al reported 2 children with “acquired reversible autistic syndrome” that closely resembles anti-NMDAR encephalitis. Likewise, in 1992 Dr Sébire and colleagues reported 6 patients with “coma associated with intense bursts of abnormal movements and long lasting cognitive and behavioral disturbances.” These authors considered an immune-mediated pathogenesis unlikely because of the absence of pleocytosis and uncommon seizures. As these are frequent features of anti-NMDAR encephalitis, whether these patients had the disorder will remain unknown unless archived serum or cerebrospinal fluid is available for study. Such studies clarified that 4 patients who had been diagnosed with an unknown infectious process in fact had antiNMDAR encephalitis, as well as some patients previously considered to have encephalitis lethargica. As for the significance of the NMDA receptor antibodies, published and recently presented data demonstrate that these antibodies dramatically alter the levels and function of NMDA receptors in vitro and in vivo, supporting a pathogenic role.

The American Journal of Cardiology, 2005

To test the hypothesis that a dietary-3 fatty acid, docosahexaenoic acid, improves the lipoprotei... more To test the hypothesis that a dietary-3 fatty acid, docosahexaenoic acid, improves the lipoprotein subclass profile of children who have hyperlipidemia, we conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Children who had hyperlipidemia (n ‫؍‬ 20) were stabilized on a low-fat diet for 6 weeks and then randomized to receive 1.2 g/day of docosahexaenoic acid for 6 weeks or placebo. Supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid significantly increased low-density lipoprotein subclass 1 and high-density lipoprotein subclass 2 (large and buoyant; less atherogenic particles) by 91% and 14%, respectively, compared with the placebo phase. Low-density lipoprotein subclass 3 (small and dense; more atherogenic particles) decreased by 48%. ᮊ2005 by Excerpta Medica Inc.

Scientific Reports, 2021

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex and heterogeneous disease that can be affected by various g... more Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex and heterogeneous disease that can be affected by various genetic factors. Although the cause of AD is not yet known and there is no treatment to cure this disease, its progression can be delayed. AD has recently been recognized as a brain-specific type of diabetes called type 3 diabetes. Several studies have shown that people with type 2 diabetes (T2D) have a higher risk of developing AD. Therefore, it is important to identify subgroups of patients with AD that may be more likely to be associated with T2D. We here describe a new approach to identify the correlation between AD and T2D at the genetic level. Subgroups of AD and T2D were each generated using a non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) approach, which generated clusters containing subsets of genes and samples. In the gene cluster that was generated by conventional gene clustering method from NMF, we selected genes with significant differences in the corresponding sample cluster by Kru...

JAMA Neurology, 2021

Plasma phosphorylated tau at threonine 181 (p-tau181) has been proposed as an easily accessible b... more Plasma phosphorylated tau at threonine 181 (p-tau181) has been proposed as an easily accessible biomarker for the detection of Alzheimer disease (AD) pathology, but its ability to monitor disease progression in AD remains unclear. OBJECTIVE To study the potential of longitudinal plasma p-tau181 measures for assessing neurodegeneration progression and cognitive decline in AD in comparison to plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL), a disease-nonspecific marker of neuronal injury.

Nature Communications, 2019

The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs744373 in the bridging integrator-1 gene (BIN1) is a r... more The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs744373 in the bridging integrator-1 gene (BIN1) is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In the brain, BIN1 is involved in endocytosis and sustaining cytoskeleton integrity. Post-mortem and in vitro studies suggest that BIN1-associated AD risk is mediated by increased tau pathology but whether rs744373 is associated with increased tau pathology in vivo is unknown. Here we find in 89 older individuals without dementia, that BIN1 rs744373 risk-allele carriers show higher AV1451 tau-PET across brain regions corresponding to Braak stages II–VI. In contrast, the BIN1 rs744373 SNP was not associated with AV45 amyloid-PET uptake. Furthermore, the rs744373 risk-allele was associated with worse memory performance, mediated by increased global tau levels. Together, our findings suggest that the BIN1 rs744373 SNP is associated with increased tau but not beta-amyloid pathology, suggesting that alterations in BIN1 may contribute to memory deficits...

The Journal of Neuroscience, 1997

Several members of the IL-1β-converting enzyme (ICE) family of proteases recently have been impli... more Several members of the IL-1β-converting enzyme (ICE) family of proteases recently have been implicated in the intracellular cascade mediating the apoptotic death of various cell types. It is unclear, however, whether ICE-related proteases are involved in apoptosis of mammalian neurons and, if so, how they are activated. Here we report the cloning of an ICE-related protease (IRP) from rat brain, which displays strong sequence identity to human CPP32.In situhybridization histochemistry reveals that this IRP mRNA is expressed in neuron-enriched regions of the developing and adult rat brain but is profoundly downregulated in the adult (compared with developing) brain. To investigate whether this IRP is involved in the death of neurons in the developing brain, we studied IRP expression in cultured cerebellar granule neurons. In cultured cerebellar granule neurons, reduction of extracellular K+reliably induces apoptosis and stimulates overexpression of IRP mRNA. The latter is especially p...

PLOS ONE, 2015

Fibroblasts from patients with Type I bipolar disorder (BPD) and their unaffected siblings were o... more Fibroblasts from patients with Type I bipolar disorder (BPD) and their unaffected siblings were obtained from an Old Order Amish pedigree with a high incidence of BPD and reprogrammed to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Established iPSCs were subsequently differentiated into neuroprogenitors (NPs) and then to neurons. Transcriptomic microarray analysis was conducted on RNA samples from iPSCs, NPs and neurons matured in culture for either 2 weeks (termed early neurons, E) or 4 weeks (termed late neurons, L). Global RNA profiling indicated that BPD and control iPSCs differentiated into NPs and neurons at a similar rate, enabling studies of differentially expressed genes in neurons from controls and BPD cases. Significant disease-associated differences in gene expression were observed only in L neurons. Specifically, 328 genes were differentially expressed between BPD and control L neurons including GAD1, glutamate decarboxylase 1 (2.5 fold) and SCN4B, the voltage gated type IV sodium channel beta subunit (-14.6 fold). Quantitative RT-PCR confirmed the up-regulation of GAD1 in BPD compared to control L neurons. Gene Ontology, GeneGo and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis of differentially regulated genes in L neurons suggest that alterations in RNA biosynthesis and metabolism, protein trafficking as well as receptor signaling pathways may play an important role in the pathophysiology of BPD.

Scientific reports, Jan 9, 2015

Microglia have been shown to contribute to the clearance of brain amyloid β peptides (Aβ), the ma... more Microglia have been shown to contribute to the clearance of brain amyloid β peptides (Aβ), the major component of amyloid plaques, in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it is not known whether microglia play a similar role in the clearance of tau, the major component of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). We now report that murine microglia rapidly internalize and degrade hyperphosphorylated pathological tau isolated from AD brain tissue in a time-dependent manner in vitro. We further demonstrate that microglia readily degrade human tau species released from AD brain sections and eliminate NFTs from brain sections of P301S tauopathy mice. The anti-tau monoclonal antibody MC1 enhances microglia-mediated tau degradation in an Fc-dependent manner. Our data identify a potential role for microglia in the degradation and clearance of pathological tau species in brain and provide a mechanism explaining the potential therapeutic actions of passively administered anti-tau monoclonal antibodies.

Drugs of the Future, 1982

Molecular neurodegeneration, Jan 23, 2014

The relationship between the pathogenic amyloid β-peptide species Aβ1-42 and tau pathology has be... more The relationship between the pathogenic amyloid β-peptide species Aβ1-42 and tau pathology has been well studied and suggests that Aβ1-42 can accelerate tau pathology in vitro and in vivo. The manners if any in which Aβ1-40 interacts with tau remains poorly understood. In order to answer this question, we used cell-based system, transgenic fly and transgenic mice as models to study the interaction between Aβ1-42 and Aβ1-40. In our established cellular model, live cell imaging (using confocal microscopy) combined with biochemical data showed that exposure to Aβ1-42 induced cleavage, phosphorylation and aggregation of wild-type/full length tau while exposure to Aβ1-40 didn't. Functional studies with Aβ1-40 were carried out in tau-GFP transgenic flies and showed that Aβ1-42, as previously reported, disrupted cytoskeletal structure while Aβ1-40 had no effect at same dose. To further explore how Aβ1-40 affects tau pathology in vivo, P301S mice (tau transgenic mice) were injected intr...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2001

Parkinson's disease is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the loss of dopa... more Parkinson's disease is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the loss of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra, decreased striatal dopamine levels, and consequent extrapyramidal motor dysfunction. We now report that minocycline, a semisynthetic tetracycline, recently shown to have neuroprotective effects in animal models of stroke/ischemic injury and Huntington's disease, prevents nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurodegeneration in the 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) mouse model of Parkinson's disease. Minocycline treatment also blocked dopamine depletion in the striatum as well as in the nucleus accumbens after MPTP administration. The neuroprotective effect of minocycline is associated with marked reductions in inducible NO synthase (iNOS) and caspase 1 expression. In vitro studies using primary cultures of mesencephalic and cerebellar granule neurons (CGN) and/or glia demonstrate that minocycline inhibits both 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridi...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1998

When administered intracerebroventricularly to mice performing various learning tasks involving e... more When administered intracerebroventricularly to mice performing various learning tasks involving either short-term or long-term memory, secreted forms of the β-amyloid precursor protein (APP s 751 and APP s 695 ) have potent memory-enhancing effects and block learning deficits induced by scopolamine. The memory-enhancing effects of APP s were observed over a wide range of extremely low doses (0.05-5,000 pg intracerebroventricularly), blocked by anti-APP s antisera, and observed when APP s was administered either after the first training session in a visual discrimination or a lever-press learning task or before the acquisition trial in an object recognition task. APP s had no effect on motor performance or exploratory activity. APP s 695 and APP s 751 were equally effective in the object recognition task, suggesting that the memory-enhancing effect of APP s does not require the Kunitz protease inhibitor domain. These data suggest an important role for APP s s on memory processes.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005

sorLA (sorting protein-related receptor) is a type-1 membrane protein of unknown function that is... more sorLA (sorting protein-related receptor) is a type-1 membrane protein of unknown function that is expressed in neurons. Its homology to sorting receptors that shuttle between the plasma membrane, endosomes, and the Golgi suggests a related function in neuronal trafficking processes. Because expression of sorLA is reduced in the brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), we tested involvement of this receptor in intracellular transport and processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) to the amyloid β-peptide (Aβ), the principal component of senile plaques. We demonstrate that sorLA interacts with APP in vitro and in living cells and that both proteins colocalize in endosomal and Golgi compartments. Overexpression of sorLA in neurons causes redistribution of APP to the Golgi and decreased processing to Aβ, whereas ablation of sorLA expression in knockout mice results in increased levels of Aβ in the brain similar to the situation in AD patients. Thus, sorLA acts as a so...