Tau Fibril Spreading Models

There are several advantages over simply using transgenic mice, including:

• No need for prolonged aging of mice to observe a high level of tau pathology
• Well-defined spatiotemporal pattern of tau pathology
• Relatively short study duration
• Models the seeding & spreading of misfolded tau protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies

Preformed fibrils (PFFs) are recombinant, monomeric proteins (e.g. α-synuclein or tau) are incubated under specific conditions to generate aggregated, misfolded fibrils. These fibrils are then sonicated to generate short fibrils that can be used for in vitro or in vivo studies.

We typically inject transgenic mice at 8 weeks-of-age and then allow for spreading for 2-3 months.

Yes. We can inject into any brain location using stereotaxic surgery. In fact, we have performed injections into the Anterior Olfactory Nucleus (AON) to determine if we observe a similar spatial pattern of spread as we see in our α-synuclein PFF model.

Yes. Our team has experience injection different types of inoculates into the brain using stereotaxic procedures.