Inhibition of protein phosphatase 1 stimulates secretion of Alzheimer amyloid precursor protein.

BACKGROUND: Aberrant metabolism of the Alzheimer amyloid precursor protein (APP) or its amyloidogenic A beta fragment is thought to be centrally involved in Alzheimer's disease. Nonamyloidogenic processing of APP involves its cleavage within the A beta domain by a protease, termed alpha-secretase, and release of the large extracellular domain, termed APPS. Secretion of APPS can be stimulated by phorbol esters, activators of protein kinase C, with concurrent inhibition of A beta production. While the role of protein kinases of APP metabolism has been investigated, considerably less effort has been devoted to elucidating the role played by protein phosphatases. Okadaic acid, a protein phosphatase inhibitor, has been shown to stimulate secretion of APPS, but the identity of the phosphatase involved has not been investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The secretion of APPS from COS-1 cells was measured in the absence or presence of various doses of serine/threonine-specific phosphatase inhibitors. Quantitation of the derived IC50 values was used to determine the identity of the phosphatase involved in the control of APP secretion. RESULTS: The availability of protein phosphatase inhibitors with different relative potencies against the different types of serine/threonine-specific protein phosphatase allowed us to examine which of the four known types of protein phosphatase might be involved in the regulation of APP secretion. Both okadaic acid and calyculin A stimulated the secretion of APP from COS-1 cells in a dose-dependent manner. The half-maximal dose for stimulation of APP secretion was approximately 100-fold higher with okadaic acid than with calyculin A. CONCLUSIONS: The nearly 100-fold difference in the observed IC50 values for okadaic acid and calyculin A implicates a type 1 protein phosphatase in the control of APPS production. Protein phosphatase 1 (PP1) is known to be highly expressed in adult mammalian brain, both in neurons and glia. The identification of a specific phosphatase type in the control of APP secretion opens new avenues to the development of rational therapeutic intervention strategies aimed at the prevention and/or treatment of Alzheimer's Disease.