Human Ependymin Neurotrophic Factor Mimetic Increases Alzheimer’s Mice Cognitive Performance in a Morris Water-Maze Test

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease thought to be caused by the abnormal production and/or low clearance of neurotoxic amyloid-beta. Using transgenic mice that mimic AD, this project measured whether AD mice treated with a neurotrophic factor mimetic previously shown to increase human neuronal survival in vitro improves mouse behavior. A Morris water-maze test that requires a functional hippocampus was used to compare learning behavior in WT and AD mice. AD mice took on average 25 secs to locate the hidden platform, while WT located it in about 10 secs (p = 0.05). Treated AD mice showed a 19% decrease (p \u3c 0.01) relative to untreated AD mice in the distance traveled to locate a marked platform, and a 24% decrease in the distance traveled to locate an unmarked platform