Search for biomarkers of central nervous system diseases that show subtle morphological changes on MRI and CT.

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Alzheimer disease (AD) is diagnosed by dementia and brain atrophy. For effective treatment of AD, we need novel diagnostic markers for early stage of AD, which shows subtle morphological changes. In cerebrospinal fluid, we found 17 kinds of glycoproteins that carried glycans unique to the brain (brain-type glycan). By immunoblotting, some of the glycoproteins were examined whether they were diagnostic markers for AD or not, but none of them was the marker. It is noted that glycoproteins often include several isoforms, which have different glycans on the same core-protein (glycan-isoforms). These glycan-isoforms are not discriminated by immunoblotting, because conventional antibodies recognize core-protein portion but not glycan one. We have recently established a method for discriminating glycan-isoforms, which would be applicable to the glycoproteins in cerebrospinal fluid of AD.