AZ goes APOE

AstraZeneca plc has assembled an academia-industry consortium to unravel the role of apolipoprotein E in Alzheimer's disease. The team, dubbed the A5 alliance, hopes to uncover basic mechanisms about how apolipoprotein E drives the disease process and to discover therapeutics tailored for carriers of the Alzheimer's disease-associated apolipoprotein E4 allele.

Even though apolipoprotein E (APOE)'s contribution to AD risk has been known since the early 1990s, the underlying mechanism remains a mystery. APOE pathophysiology has proven hard to study because the protein plays multiple roles in cholesterol transport, cardiovascular function and inflammation, all of which are thought to affect AD.¹...