Alongside his work in venture investing, Jean-Jacques Degroof serves as an international lecturer on topics such as innovation management and entrepreneurship. A graduate of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Jean-Jacques Degroof continues to support the school and its research endeavors. MIT recently completed a study led by Prof. Li-Huei Tsai on the gene known as APOE4, which is associated with Alzheimer’s disease and the buildup of amyloid proteins called plaque in the brain. The study sought to compare this gene with its more common expression, APOE3, by examining brain cells developed from human stem cells. Previous studies had identified significantly increased amounts of amyloid proteins in people with the APOE4 gene variant. In the recent study, MIT neuroscientists sought to discover the cause of that difference by evaluating genes of identical genetic material with the exception of the APOE4 and APOE3 gene. They compared these genes in three different types of brain cells. The researchers found differences ranging from dysregulation of cholesterol metabolism to increased formation of synapses in the APOE4 gene versus the standard APOE3 gene. Researchers also succeeded in reversing many of these differences in brain cells from a patient with Alzheimer's disease by substituting the regular gene for the variant.
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