Frontotemporal dementia and Parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by mutations in the gene that encodes for tau, a microtubule-binding protein. Neuropathologically the disease is characterized by extensive neuronal loss in the frontal and temporal lobes and the filamentous accumulation of hyperphosphorylated tau. The R406W missense mutation was originally described in an American and a Dutch family. Although R406W tau is hyperphosphorylated in FTDP-17 cases, R406W tau expressed in cell model systems has not shown increased phosphorylation. The purpose of this study was to establish a neuronal model system in which the phosphorylation of R406W tau is increased and thus more representative of the in vivo situation. To accomplish this goal immortalized mouse cortical cells that express low levels of endogenous tau were stably transfected with human wild type or R406W tau. In this neuronal model R406W tau was more highly phosphorylated at numerous epitopes and showed decreased microtubule binding compared with wild type tau, an effect that could be reversed by dephosphorylation. In addition the expression of R406W tau in the cortical cells resulted in increased cell death as compared with wild type tau-expressing cells when the cells were exposed to an apoptotic stressor. These results indicate that in an appropriate cellular context R406W tau is hyperphosphorylated, which leads to decreased microtubule binding. Furthermore, expression of R406W tau sensitized cells to apoptotic stress, which may contribute to the neuronal cell loss that occurs in this FTDP-17 tauopathy.Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) 1 refers to a group of neurological disorders that are characterized clinically by progressive behavioral changes and neuropathologically by neuronal loss in the frontal and temporal lobes and the presence of filamentous deposits of abnormally hyperphosphorylated tau protein in neurons and/or glial cells (1-4). FTDs occur mainly as sporadic cases but also as familial forms with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance and age-dependent penetrance (1). In 1998 it was demonstrated that several familial FTDs were due to mutations in the tau gene and have been referred to as frontotemporal dementia and Parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17) (5-7). Since these initial discoveries, additional tau mutations have been described in frontotemporal dementia families, and presently over 25 mutations in the tau gene have been identified (8, 9). They include missense mutations in coding regions, amino acid deletions, and intronic mutations in the region following exon 10. The mutations may be divided into two main groups, those that affect alternative splicing of exon 10, leading to changes in the ratio of tau mRNAs with or without exon 10, and thus the proportion of tau with three microtubule binding repeats versus tau with four microtubule binding repeats, and missense mutations.Tau is a microtubule-associated protein that facilitates microtubule assembly an...