Browsing by Author "Hughson, Andrew G."

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    A same day α-synuclein RT-QuIC seed amplification assay for synucleinopathy biospecimens
    (Springer Nature, 2025) Parveen, Sabiha; Alam, Parvez; Orrù, Christina D.; Vascellari, Sarah; Hughson, Andrew G.; Zou, Wen-Quan; Beach, Thomas G.; Serrano, Geidy E.; Goldstein, David S.; Ghetti, Bernardino; Cossu, Giovanni; Pisano, Giada; Pinna, Beatrice; Caughey, Byron; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine
    Parkinson’s disease (PD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and other synucleinopathies are characterized by the accumulation of abnormal, self-propagating aggregates of α-synuclein. RT-QuIC or seed amplification assays are currently showing unprecedented diagnostic sensitivities and specificities for synucleinopathies even in prodromal phases years in advance of the onset of Parkinsonian signs or dementia. However, commonly used α-synuclein seed amplification assays take ≥48 h to perform as applied to patients’ diagnostic biospecimens. Here, we report the development of a faster α-synuclein RT-QuIC assay that is as analytically sensitive as prior assays of this type, but can be completed in ≤12 h for brain, skin, and intestinal mucosa, with positive signals often arising in <5 h. CSF assays took a few hours longer. Our same-day α-synuclein RT-QuIC (sdRT-QuIC) assay should increase the practicality, cost-effectiveness, and throughput of measurements of pathological forms of α-synuclein for fundamental research, clinical diagnosis, and therapeutics development.
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    Bank Vole Prion Protein As an Apparently Universal Substrate for RT-QuIC-Based Detection and Discrimination of Prion Strains
    (Public Library of Science, 2015-06) Orrú, Christina D.; Groveman, Bradley R.; Raymond, Lynne D.; Hughson, Andrew G.; Nonno, Romolo; Zou, Wenquan; Ghetti, Bernardino; Gambetti, Pierluigi; Caughey, Byron; Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, IU School of Medicine
    Prions propagate as multiple strains in a wide variety of mammalian species. The detection of all such strains by a single ultrasensitive assay such as Real Time Quaking-induced Conversion (RT-QuIC) would facilitate prion disease diagnosis, surveillance and research. Previous studies have shown that bank voles, and transgenic mice expressing bank vole prion protein, are susceptible to most, if not all, types of prions. Here we show that bacterially expressed recombinant bank vole prion protein (residues 23-230) is an effective substrate for the sensitive RT-QuIC detection of all of the different prion types that we have tested so far--a total of 28 from humans, cattle, sheep, cervids and rodents, including several that have previously been undetectable by RT-QuIC or Protein Misfolding Cyclic Amplification. Furthermore, comparison of the relative abilities of different prions to seed positive RT-QuIC reactions with bank vole and not other recombinant prion proteins allowed discrimination of prion strains such as classical and atypical L-type bovine spongiform encephalopathy, classical and atypical Nor98 scrapie in sheep, and sporadic and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Comparison of protease-resistant RT-QuIC conversion products also aided strain discrimination and suggested the existence of several distinct classes of prion templates among the many strains tested.
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    Million-fold sensitivity enhancement in proteopathic seed amplification assays for biospecimens by Hofmeister ion comparisons
    (National Academy of Sciences, 2019-11-12) Metrick, Michael A., II; do Carmo Ferreira, Natalia; Saijo, Eri; Hughson, Andrew G.; Kraus, Allison; Orrú, Christina; Miller, Michael W.; Zanusso, Gianluigi; Ghetti, Bernardino; Vendruscolo, Michele; Caughey, Byron; Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine
    Recent work with prion diseases and synucleinopathies indicates that accurate diagnostic methods for protein-folding diseases can be based on the ultrasensitive, amplified measurement of pathological aggregates in biospecimens. A better understanding of the physicochemical factors that control the seeded polymerization of such aggregates, and their amplification in vitro, should allow improvements in existing assay platforms, as well as the development of new assays for other proteopathic aggregates. Here, we systematically investigated the effects of the ionic environment on the polymerization of tau, α-synuclein, and the prion protein (PrP) induced by aggregates in biospecimens. We screened salts of the Hofmeister series, a relative ordering of strongly and weakly hydrated salts that tend to precipitate or solubilize proteins. We found that sensitivities of tau-based assays for Alzheimer’s seeds and PrP-based assays for prions were best in weakly hydrated anions. In contrast, we saw an inverse trend with different tau-based assays, improving detection sensitivity for progressive supranuclear palsy seeds by ≈106. Hofmeister analysis also improved detection of sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease prions in human nasal brushings and chronic wasting disease prions in deer-ear homogenates. Our results demonstrate strong and divergent influences of ionic environments on the amplification and detection of proteopathic seeds as biomarkers for protein-folding diseases.