Granulovacuolar Degenerations Appear in Relation to Hippocampal Phosphorylated Tau Accumulation in Various Neurodegenerative Disorders

BACKGROUND: Granulovacuolar degeneration (GVD) is one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and it is defined as electron-dense granules within double membrane-bound cytoplasmic vacuoles. Several lines of evidence have suggested that GVDs appear within hippocampal pyramidal neurons in AD when phosphorylated tau begins to aggregate into early-stage neurofibrillary tangles. The aim of this study is to investigate the association of GVDs with phosphorylated tau pathology to determine whether GVDs and phosphorylated tau coexist among different non-AD neurodegenerative disorders. METHODS: An autopsied series of 28 patients with a variety of neurodegenerative disorders and 9 control patients were evaluated. Standard histological stains along with immunohistochemistry using protein markers for GVD and confocal microscopy were utilized. RESULTS: The number of neurons with GVDs significantly increased with the level of phosphorylated tau accumulation in the hippocampal regions in non-AD neurodegenerative disorders. At the cellular level, diffuse staining for phosphorylated tau was detected in neurons with GVDs. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that GVDs appear in relation to hippocampal phosphorylated tau accumulation in various neurodegenerative disorders, while the presence of phosphorylated tau in GVD-harbouring neurons in non-AD neurodegenerative disorders was indistinguishable from age-related accumulation of phosphorylated tau. Although GVDs in non-AD neurodegenerative disorders have not been studied thoroughly, our results suggest that they are not incidental findings, but rather they appear in relation to phosphorylated tau accumulation, further highlighting the role of GVD in the process of phosphorylated tau accumulation

Chiral Pyridinium Phosphoramide as a Dual Brønsted Acid Catalyst for Enantioselective Diels–Alder Reaction

Chiral pyridinium phosphoramide <b>1·HX</b> was designed to be a new class of chiral Brønsted acid catalyst in which both the pyridinium proton and the adjacent imide-like proton activated by the electron-withdrawing pyridinium moiety could work cooperatively as strong dual proton donors. The potential of <b>1·HX</b> was shown in the enantioselective Diels–Alder reactions of 1-amino dienes with various dienophiles including <i>N</i>-unsubstituted maleimide, which has yet to be successfully used in an asymmetric Diels–Alder reaction

Double Pion Photoproduction on Deuteron(I. Nuclear Physics)

Exclusive cross sections for double-pion photoproductions on proton and deuteron were measured in an energy range from 0.8 to 1.1GeV using tagged photons at Laboratory of Nuclear Science, Tohoku University. We employed the Neutral Kaon Spectrometer (NKS) to detect two pions in the final state, and deduced the cross section for the π^+π^- photoproduction on the "free" and "bound" proton. We have discriminated between the quasi-free and non-quasi-free process applying the kinematical cut on the missing momentum. We found that the total cross section for the γ"p"→pπ^+π^- reaction was about 60% of that for the "free" proton, and this is consistent with the previously obtained data. The one of the dominant part of the non-quasi-free process was found to be the double Δ production. Its cross section is smaller than the previous investigations