Endothelial Progenitor Cells and Vascular Alterations in Alzheimer’s Disease

Antía Custodia, Alberto Ouro, Daniel Romaus-Sanjurjo, Juan Manuel Pías-Peleteiro, Helga E. de Vries, José Castillo, Tomás Sobrino

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articleAcademicpeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease representing the most common type of dementia worldwide. The early diagnosis of AD is very difficult to achieve due to its complexity and the practically unknown etiology. Therefore, this is one of the greatest challenges in the field in order to develop an accurate therapy. Within the different etiological hypotheses proposed for AD, we will focus on the two-hit vascular hypothesis and vascular alterations occurring in the disease. According to this hypothesis, the accumulation of β-amyloid protein in the brain starts as a consequence of damage in the cerebral vasculature. Given that there are several vascular and angiogenic alterations in AD, and that endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) play a key role in endothelial repair processes, the study of EPCs in AD may be relevant to the disease etiology and perhaps a biomarker and/or therapeutic target. This review focuses on the involvement of endothelial dysfunction in the onset and progression of AD with special emphasis on EPCs as a biomarker and potential therapeutic target.

Original languageEnglish
Article number811210
JournalFrontiers in aging neuroscience
Volume13
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jan 2022

Keywords

  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • biomarkers
  • blood brain barrier dysfunction
  • endothelial progenitor cells
  • endothelial repair
  • neurotoxicity
  • two-hit vascular hypothesis
  • vascular alteration

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