11 New Gene Variants Linked to Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Discovered
The International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (IGAP), the largest international Alzheimer’s disease genetics collaboration to date, has found 11 new genetic “areas of interest” that may contribute to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. This doubles the number of potential genetics-based therapeutic targets to investigate in Alzheimer’s. The study was published online by Nature Genetics on Sunday, October 27.
In 2011, IGAP was formed to discover and map the genes that contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. The formation of this landmark international collaboration was funded by the Alzheimer’s Association and the Fondation Plan Alzheimer. The collaborative effort, spanning universities and research centers from both Europe and the United States, combines the knowledge, staff and resources of four consortia that conduct research on Alzheimer’s disease genetics.
The new genetic findings expand the scope of our understanding of Alzheimer’s to new areas, including the immune system, where a genetic overlap was identified with other neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.
This is extremely important research in taking our ability to detect and treat Alzheimer’s disease to the next level. Identification of genes that contribute to Alzheimer’s risk and influence the progression of disease may:
- Help lead us to the cause of the disease.
- Identify proteins and other new targets for drug development.
- Provide genetic methods for determining which people are at greatest risk for Alzheimer’s when preventative measures become available.
Alzheimer’s Association Involvement
The Alzheimer’s Association is pleased to fund this project that brings together four well-established and highly regarded research groups to enable an unprecedented sharing and analysis of Alzheimer’s disease genetic data. These results would not be possible without large-scale collaborative efforts, such as IGAP, which bring larger study populations and increased resources to solving the problem of Alzheimer’s disease. Only by working together can they amass a large enough group of participants to accelerate gene discovery. For example, in the newly published study, pooling resources through IGAP, the collaborative team was able to collect 74,076 participants (including people with Alzheimer’s and controls) from 15 countries.
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