With funding from the National Institute on Aging, Penn's School of Medicine launched a new study that aims to to identify genes that influence the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
The National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, will provide $18.3 million over five years for this study. The study is led by professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Gerard Schellenberg.
According to Schellenberg, there are two types of genes related to the disease. The first group of genes actually causes the disease, while the second group increases a person's susceptibility to the disease.
He explained that his team started to work on the topic this month, but has been gathering DNA data for a number of years.
There are 29 Alzheimer's centers in the United States participating in the study, and Schellenberg said his team's data will also come from their clinical databases and DNA information from patients' tissues or blood.
As enough data accumulate, the team will look at the genetic information of thousands of Alzheimer's patients and people who do not have the disease.
After gathering each individual's genetic information, Schellenberg's team will compare the genes of diseased people to those of healthy people.
From this comparison, they will identify "susceptibility genes" for Alzheimer's disease.
Schellenberg said there are two important reasons for this study. "If we find the susceptibility genes, we will be able to predict people's risks before they get Alzheimer's disease," he said.
So far, there is no known way to prevent the disease, and looking at symptoms is the only way to diagnose it. He said this study will make it possible to identify those who are more susceptible.
He added that by finding the genes that contribute to the disease, it will be possible to look at the disease on a molecular level, which will eventually enable drug companies to design preventative medication.
Schellenberg said he thinks that cooperation is an important factor in this consortium study.
"This study requires lots of different people to cooperate," Schellenberg said. "It will be also hard to collect a large amount of DNA data in one place."
But, Schellenberg is "optimistic that we will succeed," he said. "I hope we will make significant progress on Alzheimer's disease in 10 years."
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