AD fruit fly: a new drug screening model for Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease, and there is no
effective drug to cure it now. It is urgent to
establish an effective and rapid drug screening model for AD. This project is going to establish AD models
using
transgenic fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) carrying the UAS-APP transgene, which will express human
APP protein in
the fly nervous system by crossing to appl-Gal4 driver flies. These APP-expressing flies will produce
AD-like symptoms,
including Amyloid deposits, neuronal loss, axon degeneration, locomotor defect, and cognitive deficits, etc.
Furthermore, some potential drugs will be selected to assess this fly AD model. We hope that one day
Alzheimer's disease
can be controlled and cured, and we are also working hard for this.
