MAPT and Alzheimer disease: To test the effects of eIF4A inhibition on the translation of proteins involved in AD, hippuristanol was used to treat cultured mammalian cells for ten minutes (HeLa, N2a and SH-SY5Y), and the polysomal associations of APP, tau, TXN (thioredoxin; NM_003329), SOD1 (superoxide dismutase 1; NM_000454), NDUFB2 (NADH dehydrogenase (ubiquinone) 1 beta subcomplex, 2; NM_004546), β-actin (NM_001101) and PABP (poly-A binding protein; NM_002568) were each determined in treated and control cells using sucrose density gradient centrifugation followed by northern analysis (figure 1).