Long-term real-time monitoring of cell migration under β-amyloid treatment.

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common age-related neurodegenerative disease and is clinically characterized by progressive loss of memory in patients. Neuropathological features of AD include the presence of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, and loss of neurons and synapses in brain regions. According to the amyloid cascade hypothesis, the accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) plays a central role in the pathogenesis of AD, and that oligomer was found to be neurotoxicity and destroy nerve cells. Therefore, microscopic observation of the morphological and behavioral changes of cells induced by Aβ, will help to elucidate the detailed mechanism of the effect of Aβ on AD. Herein, we presented a chip-based method for long-term real-time cellular imaging, which could be performed at a whole field of view at 1 cm2 with ultrahigh resolution of 500 nm. Neuronal-like cell lines were employed to investigate the cellular migrations under Aβ 42 oligomer treatment. Both the cellular differentiation and representative cellular migrations under oligomer stimuli were tracked in a few days’ time, showing abnormal cellular behaviors with a high oligomer concentration. Our results would shed new light on the cellular evidence of the amyloid cascade hypothesis.