APP and Alzheimer disease: Aβ is the major constituent of the tissue deposits found in parenchymal plaques and cerebral blood vessels of patients with AD and with Down's syndrome, the latter exhibiting a trisomy in chromosome 21 which codes for the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) and lead to AD pathology by middle age (Masters et al., 1985a; Busciglio et al., 2002).