Provided herein are compositions and methods for treating and/or preventingneurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer's disease. In particularaspects, compositions administered herein encode a cellular immune responseelement. The compositions may be prepared and administered in such a manner thatthe cellular immune response element coding sequence is expressed in the subjectto which the composition is administered. The compositions include expressionsystems, delivery systems, and certain cellular immune response element genes.