Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is
the most common neurodegenerative
disease, and efficient therapeutic and early diagnostic agents for
AD are still lacking. Herein, we report the development of a novel
amphiphilic compound, LS-4, generated by linking a hydrophobic amyloid-binding
distyrylbenzene fragment with a hydrophilic triazamacrocycle, which
dramatically increases the binding affinity toward various amyloid
β (Aβ) peptide aggregates, especially for soluble Aβ
oligomers. Moreover, upon the administration of LS-4 to 5xFAD mice,
fluorescence imaging of LS-4-treated brain sections reveals that LS-4
can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and bind to the Aβ oligomers in vivo. In addition, the treatment of 5xFAD mice with LS-4
reduces the amount of both amyloid plaques and associated phosphorylated
tau aggregates vs the vehicle-treated 5xFAD mice, while microglia
activation is also reduced. Molecular dynamics simulations corroborate
the observation that introducing a hydrophilic moiety into the molecular
structure of LS-4 can enhance the electrostatic interactions with
the polar residues of the Aβ species. Finally, exploiting the
Cu2+-chelating property of the triazamacrocycle, we performed
a series of imaging and biodistribution studies that show the 64Cu-LS-4 complex binds to the amyloid plaques and can accumulate
to a significantly larger extent in the 5xFAD mouse brains vs the
wild-type controls. Overall, these results illustrate that the novel
strategy, to employ an amphiphilic molecule containing a hydrophilic
moiety attached to a hydrophobic amyloid-binding fragment, can increase
the binding affinity for both soluble and insoluble Aβ aggregates
and can thus be used to detect and regulate various Aβ species
in AD.