In one of the biggest projects ever funded in this area, a team at the University of Exeter, with co-investigators from the universities of Bristol and Essex and the UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London, will analyse patterns of gene activity in different cell-types in the brain to find changes associated with Alzheimer’s.   

Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder that affects more than 26 million people worldwide, with no treatment available to improve the course of the disease. Despite major advances in identifying genetic risk factors, uncertainty remains about the specific genes that cause the condition and how their function is dysregulated in its progression. 

It is known that Alzheimer’s disease is characterised by changes occurring in certain cell-types, for example it involves the extensive loss of neurons. Therefore, it is critical to measure gene activity in each different brain cell-type individually to understand how they are linked to the development of the condition. Mapping the differences will potentially enable a step-change in unravelling the mechanism of Alzheimer’s disease.  

Read the full University of Bristol press release