{"id":17132,"date":"2019-12-01T04:48:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T04:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=17132"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:39:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:39:00","slug":"new-study-reveals-how-individual-cell-types-in-the-brain-contribute-to-alzheimers-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/new-study-reveals-how-individual-cell-types-in-the-brain-contribute-to-alzheimers-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"New study reveals how individual cell types in the brain contribute to Alzheimer\u2019s disease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Asia Research News<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SINGAPORE \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Researchers led by Duke-NUS Medical School<\/a>, in collaboration with Monash University, have now published a comprehensive and detailed study of gene expression changes in specific human brain cell types that are associated with progression of Alzheimer\u2019s disease. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leveraging the latest single-cell sequencing technology, the findings yield insights that may aid in scientists\u2019 pursuit of potential druggable gene targets for drug development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLimited information has been available about how individual cell types in the brain contribute to Alzheimer\u2019s disease,\u201d said study co-senior author Assistant Professor Owen Rackham, from Duke-NUS\u2019 Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders (CVMD) Programme. \u201cAlthough various genes have been implicated in Alzheimer\u2019s disease, we do not know which cell types harbour these differences in gene expression.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Focusing on the need to study cell types other than neurons, the main type of cell found in the brain, the researchers applied an innovative single-nucleus RNA sequencing technology called DroNCSeq to cells from the brain\u2019s entorhinal cortex, sampled from both control and Alzheimer\u2019s disease brains, yielding a total of over 13,000 high quality nuclei that they could analyse for gene expression differences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entorhinal cortex, together with the hippocampus, are the regions of the brain that scientists understand to be involved in processing and storing memories, perceiving time, and predicting the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associate Professor Enrico Petretto, co-senior author of the study, explained, \u201cOur research sought to explore whether the answer to treating Alzheimer\u2019s lies in understanding how non-neuronal cells are affected during the disease. Using DroNCSeq, we were able to study differences in gene expressions at single-cell resolution, which is key to understanding how genes identified by genome-wide association studies in specific cell subpopulations are associated with Alzheimer\u2019s disease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study identified new subpopulations of cells present only in Alzheimer\u2019s disease patient brains as well as common and distinct networks of genes and functions that were coregulated across different types of cells. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These results provide insights into the coordinated control of Alzheimer\u2019s disease risk genes and their cell type-specific contribution to disease susceptibility, and can ultimately help scientists identify potential gene targets for Alzheimer\u2019s disease drug development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To facilitate access to these insights by other researchers, the research team published an interactive online tool to visualise and analyse their dataset, providing a unique resource for future studies seeking to understand cellular differences and define functional changes at single-cell level in the human Alzheimer\u2019s disease brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Patrick Casey, Senior Vice Dean at Duke-NUS, commented, \u201cAlzheimer\u2019s disease affects not only the patient, but also their caregivers. It is a global disease with biological, social, psychological, and economic impacts that will only grow in importance with increasingly ageing populations around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This study underscores the important role technological innovation and data science can play not only in helping us to better understand the disease, but also to identify potential drug targets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research team are following up with further research on identified potential druggable genes.<\/p>\n
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Asia Research News SINGAPORE \u2013\u00a0Researchers led by Duke-NUS Medical School, in collaboration with Monash University, have now published a comprehensive and detailed study of gene expression changes in specific human brain cell types that are associated with progression of Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Leveraging the latest single-cell sequencing technology, the findings yield insights that may aid in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-news","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",1100,1091,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-200x200.png",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-300x298.png",300,298,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-768x762.png",750,744,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-1024x1016.png",750,744,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",1100,1091,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",1100,1091,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",807,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",575,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",600,595,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",600,595,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-760x490.png",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-550x360.png",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers-95x65.png",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",640,635,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",96,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/alzimers.png",150,149,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Health<\/a> News<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}