Reversing Synapse Loss in Alzheimer's Disease: Rho-Guanosine Triphosphatases and Insights from Other Brain Disorders

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a monumental public health crisis with no effective cure or treatment. To date, therapeutic strategies have focused almost exclusively on upstream signaling events in the disease, namely on beta-amyloid and amyloid precursor protein processing, and have, unfortunately, yielded few, if any, promising results. An alternative approach may be to target signaling events downstream of beta-amyloid and even tau. However, with so many pathways already linked to the disease, understanding which ones are drivers versus passengers in the pathogenesis of the disease remains a tremendous challenge. Given the critical roles of Rho-guanosine triphosphatases (GTPases) in regulating the actin cytoskeleton and spine dynamics, and the strong association between spine abnormalities and cognition, it is not surprising that mutations in a number of genes involved in Rho-GTPase signaling have been implicated in several brain disorders, including schizophrenia and autism. And now, there is mounting literature implicating Rho-GTPase signaling in AD pathogenesis as well. Here, I review this evidence, with a particular emphasis on the regulators of Rho-GTPase signaling, namely guanine nucleotide exchange factors and GTPase-activating proteins. Several of these have been linked to various aspects of AD, and each offers a novel potential therapeutic target for AD.