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Critical role of acetylation in tau-mediated neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits

Nature Medicine volume 21, pages 1154–1162 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Tauopathies, including frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), are neurodegenerative diseases in which tau fibrils accumulate. Recent evidence supports soluble tau species as the major toxic species. How soluble tau accumulates and causes neurodegeneration remains unclear. Here we identify tau acetylation at Lys174 (K174) as an early change in AD brains and a critical determinant in tau homeostasis and toxicity in mice. The acetyl-mimicking mutant K174Q slows tau turnover and induces cognitive deficits in vivo. Acetyltransferase p300-induced tau acetylation is inhibited by salsalate and salicylate, which enhance tau turnover and reduce tau levels. In the PS19 transgenic mouse model of FTD, administration of salsalate after disease onset inhibited p300 activity, lowered levels of total tau and tau acetylated at K174, rescued tau-induced memory deficits and prevented hippocampal atrophy. The tau-lowering and protective effects of salsalate were diminished in neurons expressing K174Q tau. Targeting tau acetylation could be a new therapeutic strategy against human tauopathies.

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Figure 1: Tau K174 is acetylated at early stages of AD.
Figure 2: K174Q leads to tau accumulation in vitro and in vivo.
Figure 3: Expression of K174Q tau induces neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits.
Figure 4: Salicylate inhibits p300 and reduces ac-K174 tau in cultured neurons and PS19 mice.
Figure 5: SSA treatment prevents hippocampal atrophy, reduces tau pathology and rescues spatial memory deficits in PS19 mice.
Figure 6: Tau-lowering and protective effects of SSA and salicylate involve ac-K174 inhibition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank V. Haroutunian (The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) and W.W. Seeley (UCSF) for human brain samples; B. Hann and J. Freimuth (UCSF) for oral gavage; L. Petrucelli (Mayo Clinic) for ac-KIGS antibody; P. Davies (Feinstein Institute for Medical Research) for MC1 and PHF-1 antibodies, Prothena Biosciences for 12E8 antibody; R. Ponnusamy and N. Devidze for advice on behavioral analyses; D. Song for PK analysis (PPL Inc); M. Finucane and S. Liu for advice on statistical analysis; L. Mucke and S. Meada for insightful discussions; L. Grinberg for technical advice on pathological analysis; C. Brennecka, G. Howard and S. Ordway for editorial review; J. Carroll and G. Maki for graphics assistance; E. Nguyen for administrative assistance and AB SCIEX for evaluation of the TripleTOF 5600 at the Buck Institute. This work was supported by a grant from the Tau Consortium (to L.G.) and US National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants 1R01AG036884 and R01AG030207 (to L.G.). We acknowledge the support of the NIH to L.E. (NIH NS40251 and NIH NS062413), and instrumentation from the NCRR shared instrumentation grant S10 RR024615 (to B.W.G.). Behavioral data were obtained with the help of the Gladstone Institutes' Neurobehavioral Core (supported by NIH grant P30NS065780).

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  1. Sang-Won Min and Xu Chen: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, San Francisco, California, USA

    Sang-Won Min, Xu Chen, Tara E Tracy, Yaqiao Li, Yungui Zhou, Chao Wang, S Sakura Minami, Peter Dongmin Sohn & Li Gan

  2. Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

    Sang-Won Min, Xu Chen, Tara E Tracy, Chao Wang, S Sakura Minami & Li Gan

  3. Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, San Francisco, California, USA

    Kotaro Shirakawa & Eric Verdin

  4. Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

    Erwin Defensor & Mehrdad Shamloo

  5. Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.,

    Sue Ann Mok & Jason Gestwicki

  6. Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.,

    Peter Dongmin Sohn & Li Gan

  7. Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, California, USA

    Birgit Schilling, Xin Cong, Lisa Ellerby & Bradford W Gibson

  8. Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, USA

    Jeffrey Johnson & Nevan Krogan

  9. Department of Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California, USA.,

    Eliezer Masliah

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Contributions

L.G., S.-W.M. and X.Chen. conceived the project. L.G., S.-W.M. and X.Chen. designed experiments. S.-W.M., X.Chen., T.E.T., P.D.S., S.A.M., C.W., K.S., S.S.M., E.D., B.S., X.Cong., J.J., Y.Z., Y.L. and E.M. performed experiments. L.E., B.W.G., M.S., J.G., N.K. and E.V. developed experimental tools or reagents. L.G., S.-W.M. and X.Chen. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Eric Verdin or Li Gan.

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Min, SW., Chen, X., Tracy, T. et al. Critical role of acetylation in tau-mediated neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits. Nat Med 21, 1154–1162 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.3951

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