Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Jun 19, 2025; 15(6): 105751
Published online Jun 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i6.105751
Increased expression of the neuroplastin 65 protein is involved in neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid beta plaques in Alzheimer’s disease
Ya-Ni Zheng, Yan Wang, Ling Chen, Li-Zhang Xu, Lei Zhang, Jia-Lu Wang, Juan Liu, Qi-Lei Zhang, Qiong-Lan Yuan
Ya-Ni Zheng, Ling Chen, Lei Zhang, Jia-Lu Wang, Qiong-Lan Yuan, Department of Human Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China
Yan Wang, Qi-Lei Zhang, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Central South University Xiangya School of Medicine, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China
Li-Zhang Xu, Department of Orthopaedics, Xiangan Hospital, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, Fujian Province, China
Juan Liu, Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing 100000, China
Qi-Lei Zhang, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Changsha Medical University, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China
Qiong-Lan Yuan, Department of Neurology, Shanghai Tongji Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China
Co-first authors: Ya-Ni Zheng and Yan Wang.
Author contributions: Zheng YN, Wang Y, and Yuan QL designed the research study; Zheng YN and Wang Y contributed equally to this article, and are the co-first authors of this manuscript; Zheng YN, Wang Y, Chen L, Xu LZ, and Zhang L performed the research; Wang JL, Liu J and Zhang QL contributed new reagents and analytic tools; Zheng YN and Wang JL analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript; and all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81771441 and No. 81371213; and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai, No. 21ZR1468400.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the School of Basic Medical Science, Central South University, approval No. 2020KT-37.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix and dataset available from the corresponding author at yqiongl@tongji.edu.cn.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Qiong-Lan Yuan, Professor, Department of Human Anatomy, Histology and Embryology, Tongji University School of Medicine, No. 1239 Siping Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 200092, China. yqiongl@tongji.edu.cn
Received: February 10, 2025
Revised: April 2, 2025
Accepted: April 27, 2025
Published online: June 19, 2025
Processing time: 110 Days and 5.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, with pathological hallmarks including intracellular neurofibrillary tangles and extracellular amyloid beta (Aβ) plaques. Synaptic membrane glycoprotein neuroplastin 65 (NP65) has been previously shown to mitigate cognitive impairments and decrease Aβ plaques in the AD mouse model. However, direct evidence linking NP65 expression to AD pathology in human brain remains absent. The present study shows that NP65 is highly expressed in a wide-range of brain areas and is significantly increased in AD cases. In addition, we found colocalization of NP65 with neurofibrillary tangles and Aβ plaques in AD brain. Thus, this study provides direct evidence of NP65 involvement in AD pathology.