Dayanni B. - Using Phage Display to Detect Blood Biomarkers for Alzheimers's Disease

Mentor: Courtney Carrol

 

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects memory, cognition, behavior, and performance. It is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States and currently there is no cure. The only biomarkers, methods of detecting presence or intensity of the disease, are through MRI or cerebrospinal fluid. These tests can check for deterioration of the brain or presence of plaque, which are strong indicators of Alzheimer's disease; however, they are very expensive and invasive. Therefore there is a call for a cheaper, less invasive, and more ideal solution: a biomarker that can be obtained from blood.

Since blood is made up of various antibodies, comparing the characteristics of AD blood to normal blood can tell us what is present in AD blood that might be significant to the disease. In our experiment, we analyzed two pools of blood, one of mixed AD samples and one normal, using phages which can attach to antibodies present; more attachments indicate a stronger presence of a specific antibody. Our second step was to validate these hits by confirming how many antibodies the phages could bind to in individual AD sample blood. Binding concentration was converted into values where we would expect the higher values indicated the presence of AD since we thought that that antibody was specific to AD. We could then find a series of phages that are significant to AD blood, then figure out what they bind to and conclude if these antibodies are part of a larger pathway which could give us more insight into AD diagnosis, progression, and treatment.

Done