The reporter learned from West Lake University on January 15 that Shi Yigong's team has made important discoveries in the field of Alzheimer's disease after eight years of exploration - they have found the "mechanism" that may trigger the memory decline of Alzheimer's disease. This discovery is of great significance for understanding the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease and developing targeted drug design. The relevant research results were recently published online in Cell Research. "Alzheimer's disease, commonly known as Alzheimer's disease, memory decline is one of the most significant clinical manifestations of this disease. With the development of gene sequencing technology, scientists have found that APOE4 is the largest risk gene for Alzheimer's disease. APOE protein is one of the human apolipoproteins. There are three subtypes of APOE2, APOE3 and APOE4 in the population. The study found that carriers of APOE2 are not prone to Alzheimer's disease; The risk of APOE4 carriers is doubled. Therefore, finding the receptor of APOE4 may be the key to solve Alzheimer's disease. Previous studies have found that the shear function of microglia to synapses can be abnormally activated in patients with Alzheimer's disease, resulting in amnesia. Whether microglia can perform their functions may be related to LilrB protein. Is there any connection between APOE protein and LilrB protein? This may be an important clue to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. "On the basis of a large number of studies, we have established a new conjecture: LilrB family proteins interact with APOE proteins, and only combine with APOE4 and not with APOE2. To verify the new hypothesis, the research team carried out a series of experiments to systematically study the interaction between five homologous proteins and three APOE subtypes of LilrB human origin family. The results are as expected: APOE4 and LilrB3 can be combined, APOE3 is weak, and APOE2 is almost completely not combined. They also further confirmed the fact that microglia "wake up" because of this combination, that is, APOE4 will activate microglia after combining with LilrB3. "This study has found the mechanism of memory decline in Alzheimer's patients, and brought a glimmer of light for human beings to deal with Alzheimer's disease." Zhou Jiayao said, next, the research team will continue to carry out research related to Alzheimer's disease and focus on drug research and development of Alzheimer's disease. (Outlook New Era)