Cellular trafficking and recycling machineries belonging to late secretory compartments have been associated with increased Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk. We have shown that coat protein complex I (COPI)-dependent trafficking, an early step in Golgi-toendoplasmic reticulum retrograde transport, affects amyloid precursor protein subcellular localization, cell-surface expression, as well as its metabolism. We present here a set of experiments demonstrating that, by targeting subunit δ-COP function, the moderation of the COPI-dependent trafficking in vivo leads to a significant decrease in amyloid plaques in the cortex and hippocampus of neurological 17 mice crossed with the 2xTg AD mouse model. Remarkably, an improvement of the memory impairments was also observed. Importantly, human genetic association studies of different AD cohorts led to the identification of 12 SNPs and 24 mutations located in COPI genes linked to an increased AD risk. These findings further demonstrate in vivo the importance of early trafficking steps in AD pathogenesis and open new clinical perspectives.ne of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the accumulation of Aβ peptides that aggregate over time to form oligomers and lead ultimately to amyloid plaques. Aβ peptides result from cleavages of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) that occur sequentially (1) and concomitantly with APP trafficking, mainly from the plasma membrane to late endosomes (1, 2). We recently addressed the possible involvement of early trafficking steps and demonstrated that at least one subunit of coat protein complex I (COPI), the main machinery underlying the retrograde transport from the Golgi apparatus to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), regulates APP trafficking, controlling its maturation and consequently the production of Aβ peptides (3). These biochemical and cellular findings demonstrate the physiological relevance of the COPI complex in AD. All together, these results indicate that the origin of the increased Aβ production in pathological conditions, when trafficking through the endocytic pathway, might be due to APP maturation-state impairments.Moreover, an in vivo model of impairment in COPI subunit delta (δ-COP), the neurological 17 (Nur17) mouse, was previously developed (4) but not yet studied in the context of AD. This mouse model represents a valuable and unique tool to characterize the relevance of δ-COP in AD etiology. The Nur17 mouse was generated by N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) mutagenesis, and positional cloning revealed that it carries a T-to-C missense mutation in δ-COP, leading to partial disruption of intracellular trafficking.Further highlighting the important role of trafficking in regulating Aβ production, in genome-wide association studies (GWASs) essential components of cellular trafficking and recycling involved in the endocytic or retromer pathways (endosometo-Golgi retrieval) have been found to be associated with increased AD risk (5, 6).In our previous study identifying δ-COP as a key regulator of APP biology (3), we demonstra...