Ai-Ling Lin1, Timothy Q. Duong1, Eric Muir1, Anuradha Soundararajan1, Peter T. Fox1, Arlan G. Richardson2, Veronica Galvan2
1Research Imaging Institute, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Anotnio, San Antonio, TX, United States; 2Barshop Institute for Logevity and Aging Studies, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Anotnio, San Antonio, TX, United States
Rapamycin is known to be associated with increased lifespan and delayed aging in mice. Recent studies show that treatment of mice modeling Alzheimers disease (AD) (e.g., hAPP(J20)) with rapamycin halts the progression of AD-like memory deficits and reduces A accumulation. Here we used multimodal neuroimaging methods (MRI and PET) to investigate the effect of rapamycin on vascular and metabolic functions in hAPP(J20) mice. Our results showed that hAPP (J20) mice had significant vasucular dysfunction (relative to metabolic), especially in the regions involved cognitive function (e.g., hippocampus; memory and learning). Rapamycin treatment restored the vascular function in hippocampus, which may consequently preserve the memory and learning ability of the hAPP (J20) mice.