Historical Background
Amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a cell-surface protein that has been well studied for its role in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is the most common form of dementia in the elderly. In 1906, Alois Alzheimer described a case of presenile dementia in which amyloid plaques were present in the brain. Later, the primary component of these plaques was identified as a small protein containing 36–43 amino acid residues (Glenner and Wong 1984; Masters et al. 1985), which has since been named the β-amyloid protein (Aβ). Aβ is produced by proteolytic cleavage of APP (Kang et al. 1987). Mutations in APP that enhance the production of specific Aβ species have been shown to accelerate AD progression (Van Cauwenberghe et al. 2016). In addition, triploidy of chromosome 21 (Down syndrome),...
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Southam, K.A., Stennard, F.A., Small, D.H. (2017). App. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6438-9_101532-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6438-9_101532-2
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