Morphological differentiation and proteoglycan synthesis regulate Alzheimer amyloid precursor protein processing in PC-12 and human astrocyte cultures.

A morphologically differentiated strain of rat pheochromocytoma (PC-12H) metabolically labeled with [35S]methionine and incubated with a phorbol ester displayed reduced 140-kDa and increased 15 kDa bands relative to cells incubated without phorbol ester after immunoprecipitation with antisera elicited by the C-terminal peptide of the Alzheimer amyloid precursor protein (APP). These bands correspond to glycosylated full length APP and a C-terminal fragment previously reported by Anderson et al. (Neurosci. Lett. 120:126-128, 1991) to result from a cleavage within the amyloidotic A4 region of APP, which releases a 120 kDa extracellular fragment. The 15 kDa fragment, not immunoprecipitated with an antisera elicited by the N-terminal portion of A4 amyloid, is nonamyloidogenic. Incubation of these cells with p-nitrophenylxyloside, known to inhibit proteoglycan formation, also increased this nonamyloidogenic cleavage of APP. In contrast to these results, an undifferentiated low passage PC-12-L strain constitutively displayed rapid nonamyloidogenic APP cleavage. Incubation of PC-12-L with phorbol ester did not affect the relative abundance of 140 or 15 kDa bands. Growth of PC-12-L with 7 S NGF or dibutyryl cAMP resulted in increased morphological differentiation and decreased APP cleavage which was now phorbol-inducible. Similar analyses of dividing and senescent human astrocytes and normal and F-AD fibroblasts indicate 5-fold lower rates of mid-A4 APP cleavage. Phorbol esters decreased the 140 kDa APP band without affecting the intensity of the 15 kDa band in these cells.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)