A plethora of evidence suggests that protein misfolding and aggregation are underlying mechanisms of various neurodegenerative diseases, such as prion diseases and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Like prion diseases, AD has been considered as an infectious disease in the past decades as it shows strain specificity and transmission potential. Although it remains elusive how protein aggregation leads to AD, it is becoming clear that cellular prion protein (PrPC) plays an important role in AD pathogenesis. Here, we briefly reviewed AD pathogenesis and focused on recent progresses how PrPC contributed to AD development. In addition, we proposed a potential mechanism to explain why infectious agents, such as viruses, conduce AD pathogenesis. Microbe infections cause Aβ deposition and upregulation of PrPC, which lead to high affinity binding between Aβ oligomers and PrPC. The interaction between PrPC and Aβ oligomers in turn activates the Fyn signaling cascade, resulting in neuron death in the central nervous system (CNS). Thus, silencing PrPC expression may turn out be an effective treatment for PrPC dependent AD.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease (AD); Amyloid-β protein; Cellular prion protein (PrPC); Neurodegenerative disease.