Linking pre-diagnosis disturbances of physiological systems to Neurodegenerative Diseases

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are progressive neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) showing growing prevalence in industrialized, aging populations.

This signifies that non-genetic mechanisms, such as environmental/lifestyle factors and other factors related to transcriptional regulation of gene expression likely make substantial contributions to disease development.

Specifically, epigenetic markers in blood, e.g., DNA methylation, likely reflect the combined effects of disease-specific pathophysiological processes, exposure to environmental and lifestyle factors, and genetics.

The main aim of our project (“EPIC4ND“) will be to assess whether methylome profiles derived from blood samples prior to disease onset in EPIC participants (n=6,900) can predict a later conversion to AD, PD and ALS.

In a subset of individuals (n~100 AD patients), we will assess longitudinal changes of methylation markers reflecting pathological processes.

In summary, EPIC4ND is in the unique position to use pre-disease biosamples to build novel multivariate and multi-omics disease prediction models allowing for an earlier detection, therapy and ultimately prevention of these three devastating diseases.