Skip to content
Project Directory
  • Français
Donate Now
  • Français
  • About
    • What We Do
    • Leadership
    • Team
    • Publications
    • Careers
  • Diseases/Disorders
    • One Brain
    • ALS
    • Alzheimer’s
    • Autism
    • Brain Cancer
    • Brain Injury
    • Epilepsy
    • Mental Illness
    • Multiple Sclerosis
    • Parkinson’s
    • Stroke
    • Other
  • Research
    • Programs
    • Funding Opportunities
    • Program Partners
    • Announcements
  • Impact
  • Ways To Give
    • Giving to Research
    • How You Can Help
    • Events

Funded Grants

Back to results

The dark microglial subset displays ultrastructural and metabolic alterations in an aged mouse model of beta-amyloid pathology

Project Overview

Dr. Hubert van Tol Travel Fellowship

AIMS: Recent technical advances helped to reveal the considerable heterogeneity of microglia, the resident immune cells of the central nervous system. One of these microglial subsets, the dark microglia (DM), was characterized by ultrastructural signs of cellular stress such as dilated endoplasmic reticulum (ER), altered mitochondria and loss of heterochromatin pattern. These dark cells were previously identified notably near amyloid beta plaques in age-matched APP-PS1 mice, a mouse model of amyloid beta deposition. However, their ultrastructural features and interactions with hallmarks of amyloid deposition (plaques, dystrophic neurites) were not yet investigated in aging.

METHODS: Using high-magnification chip mapping by scanning electron microscopy, we first analyzed the density of both typical and DM in the ventral hippocampus CA1 (strata lacunosum-moleculare and radiatum) of 20-month-old male WT versus APP-PS1 mice.

RESULTS: In the stratum lacunosum-moleculare, dark microglia represented nearly 43% of all microglial cells found near AD hallmarks. We found DM interacting more with dystrophic neurites, while contacting less healthy synaptic elements, myelinated axons and brain vasculature compared to typical microglia.

CONCLUSIONS: The present study further highlights the close interactions between DM and amyloid beta deposition hallmarks, suggesting a specialized involvement, whether beneficial or detrimental, compared to typical microglia in this context. Further investigations into the prevalence and parenchymal interactions of DM with Alzheimer’s disease hallmarks will be performed in postmortem brain samples from Alzheimer’s patients and aged-matched controls. Studying DM close interactions with disease hallmarks could help us find new therapeutic targets modulating these cells in a context-dependent manner.

Principal Investigator

Marie-Kim St-Pierre , Université Laval

Partners and Donors

Seger-van Tol Family

Project Ongoing

The dark microglial subset displays ultrastructural and metabolic alterations in an aged mouse model of beta-amyloid pathology

  • Program Type

    Capacity building grants

  • Area of research

    Neurodegeneration

  • Disease Area

    Alzheimer’s

  • Competition

    Rising Stars Trainee Awards

  • Province

    Québec

  • Start Date

    2022

  • Total Grant Amount

    $2,262

  • Health Canada Contribution

    $1,131

Contact Us

1200 McGill College Avenue
Suite 1600, Montreal, Quebec
H3B 4G7

+1 (514) 989-2989 info@braincanada.ca

Playing with Marbles Podcast

Join us and take a journey to the real last great frontier – the brain.

Listen

Subscribe to Brain News

Receive our monthly electronic newsletter with updates on funded projects, upcoming events and breakthroughs in brain research.

Sign Up

Territorial acknowledgement

The offices of Brain Canada Foundation are located on the traditional, ancestral territory of the Kanien'kehá:ka Peoples, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations. We honour and pay respect to elders past, present and emerging, and dedicate ourselves to moving forward in the spirit of partnership, collaboration, and reconciliation. In our work, we focus our efforts on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, particularly those that pertain to improving health for Indigenous Peoples and that focus on advancing our own learning on Indigenous issues.

© 2023 Brain Canada Foundation

Registration number: 89105 2094 RR0001

  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

Design by Field Trip & Co