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Disease-Specific α-Synuclein Seeding and Structural Properties in Lewy Body Disease and Multiple System Atrophy are Preserved in Formaldehyde-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Human Brain
Kim, A.; Martinez-Valbuena, I.; Li, J.; Lang, A.E.; Kovacs, G.G. Disease-Specific α-Synuclein Seeding in Lewy Body Disease and Multiple System Atrophy Are Preserved in Formaldehyde-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Human Brain. Biomolecules2023, 13, 936.
Kim, A.; Martinez-Valbuena, I.; Li, J.; Lang, A.E.; Kovacs, G.G. Disease-Specific α-Synuclein Seeding in Lewy Body Disease and Multiple System Atrophy Are Preserved in Formaldehyde-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Human Brain. Biomolecules 2023, 13, 936.
Kim, A.; Martinez-Valbuena, I.; Li, J.; Lang, A.E.; Kovacs, G.G. Disease-Specific α-Synuclein Seeding in Lewy Body Disease and Multiple System Atrophy Are Preserved in Formaldehyde-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Human Brain. Biomolecules2023, 13, 936.
Kim, A.; Martinez-Valbuena, I.; Li, J.; Lang, A.E.; Kovacs, G.G. Disease-Specific α-Synuclein Seeding in Lewy Body Disease and Multiple System Atrophy Are Preserved in Formaldehyde-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Human Brain. Biomolecules 2023, 13, 936.
Abstract
Recent studies have been able to detect α-synuclein (αSyn) seeding in formaldehyde-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues from patients with synucleinopathies using seed amplification assays (SAAs), but with relatively low sensitivity due to limited protein extraction efficiency. With the aim of introducing an alternative option to frozen tissues, we developed a streamlined protein extraction protocol for evaluating disease-specific seeding in FFPE human brain. We evaluated the protein extraction efficiency of different tissue preparations, deparaffinizations, and protein extraction buffers using formaldehyde-fixed and FFPE tissue of a single Lewy body disease (LBD) subject. Alternatively, we incorporated heat-induced antigen-retrieval and dissociation using a commercially available kit. Our novel protein extraction protocol has been optimized to work with 10 sections of 4.5-µm-thickness or 2-mm-diameter micro-punch of FFPE tissue that can be used to seed SAAs. We demonstrated that extracted proteins from FFPE still preserve seeding potential and further show disease-specific seeding in LBD and multiple system atrophy. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to recapitulate disease-specific αSyn seeding behavior in FFPE human brain, with structural validation. Our findings open new perspectives in re-evaluating archived human brain tissue, extending the disease-specific seeding assays to larger cohorts to facilitate molecular subtyping of synucleinopathies.
Keywords
alpha-synuclein; protein extraction; FFPE; SAA; seeding behavior
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Medicine and Pharmacology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
