Front Neurosci. 2017 Apr 21;11:192. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00192. eCollection 2017.
Frontiers in neuroscience
Stuart K Calderwood, Ayesha Murshid
PMID: 28484363 PMCID: PMC5399083 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00192
Molecular chaperones are required to maintain the proteome in a folded and functional state. When challenges to intracellular folding occur, the heat shock response is triggered, leading to increased synthesis of a class of inducible chaperones known as heat shock proteins (HSP). Although HSP synthesis is known to undergo a general decline in most cells with aging, the extent of this process varies quite markedly in some of the diseases associated with advanced age. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), a prevalent protein folding disorder in the brain, the heat shock response of some critical classes of neurons becomes reduced. The resulting decline in HSP expression may be a consequence of the general enfeeblement of many aspects of cell physiology with aging and/or a response to the pathological changes in metabolism observed specifically in AD. Cancer cells, in contrast to normal aging cells, undergo
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; cancer; heat shock protein; molecular chaperone; proteotoxic stress