NGF and Alzheimer disease: By Western blotting analysis on total protein extracts, we evaluated the steady-state levels of different markers of synaptic and cytoskeleton compartments which are known to be greatly affected during the initial NGF-dependent “dying-back”-like mechanisms of cell degeneration occurring in vivo at the earliest stages of AD neuropathology (Stokin and Goldstein, 2006; Kanaan et al., 2013).