Research and therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and other neurological conditions mediated by protein expression in the brain.
Millions of Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Furthermore, depression affects around 16 million American adults every year. The prevalence of these neurological conditions has inspired researchers at Emory University to conduct and integrate genome and proteome-wide association studies to identify genes, genetic variants and their encoded proteins associated with AD and depression. The described inventions will contribute to the global market for Alzheimer’s disease treatment, as well as to the global antidepressant market.
Researchers at Emory identified 11 genes that showed evidence with a causal role in AD. The inventors envision these findings being used as a research tool to better understand the genetic basis of AD, as well as to develop therapeutics for the disease. Using similar methodology, the researchers identified 24 genetic variants and their encoded proteins associated with depression. 13 of these variants were found to contribute to depression by altering their corresponding proteins’ abundance in the brain. Researchers generated a large number of human brain proteomes and conducted protein quantitative trait locus mapping to identify the genetic sites associated with protein abundance of thousands of proteins. This dataset has broad applications, and the researchers envision it being used to better understand GWAS results and identify therapeutic targets, specifically protein targets, for the modulation of protein expression.