A calcium-sensitive antibody isolates soluble amyloid-β aggregates and fibrils from Alzheimer’s disease brain

Aqueously soluble oligomers of amyloid-β peptide may be the principal neurotoxic forms of amyloid-β in Alzheimer’s disease, initiating downstream events that include tau hyperphosphorylation, neuritic/synaptic injury, microgliosis and neuron loss. Synthetic oligomeric amyloid-β has been studied extensively, but little is known about the biochemistry of natural oligomeric amyloid-β in human brain, even though it is more potent than simple synthetic peptides and comprises truncated and modified amyloid-β monomers. We hypothesized that monoclonal antibodies specific to neurotoxic oligomeric amyloid-β could be used to isolate it for further study. Here we report a unique human monoclonal antibody (B24) raised against synthetic oligomeric amyloid-β that potently prevents Alzheimer’s disease brain oligomeric amyloid-β-induced impairment of hippocampal long-term potentiation. B24 binds natural and synthetic oligomeric amyloid-β and a subset of amyloid plaques, but only in the presence of Ca(2+). The amyloid-β N terminus is required for B24 binding. Hydroxyapatite chromatography revealed that natural oligomeric amyloid-β is highly avid for Ca(2+). We took advantage of the reversible Ca(2+)-dependence of B24 binding to perform non-denaturing immunoaffinity isolation of oligomeric amyloid-β from Alzheimer’s disease brain-soluble extracts. Unexpectedly, the immunopurified material contained amyloid fibrils visualized by electron microscopy and amenable to further structural characterization. B24-purified human oligomeric amyloid-β inhibited mouse hippocampal long-term potentiation. These findings identify a calcium-dependent method for purifying bioactive brain oligomeric amyloid-β, at least some of which appears fibrillar.