Resilience conferred by APOE-R136S:a defense bestowed by nature to combat Alzheimer’s disease

In two recent articles published in Nature Neuroscience and Cell,Nelson et al.1 and Chen et al.2 have shown that a rare APOE3 Christchurch(APOE3Ch)variant,R136S,has protective effects on neurodegeneration in various Alzheimer’s disease(AD)model systems through attenuating tau pathology and regulating its related neuroimmune responses.Nelson et al.and Chen et al.have provided evidence that identifying the pathophysiologic clues and potential molecular targets from a protective variant such as APOE R136S,can be an attractive viable approach to develop AD therapeutics.