New Neurotez method can predict genetic factors responsible for AD

Mar 22 2011

The new Neurotez method will allow for an elegant and rapid way to screen a large number of patient-derived samples and measure the degree of confidence in predicting a subject's risk for getting Alzheimer's disease, based on her/his TOMM40/APOE haplotype. TOMM40 has been implicated as a potential biomarker for those at risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, based on work by Allen Roses' team at Duke University's Deane Drug Discovery Institute.

This method may further help the design of clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease (AD), where a significant problem is the difficulty in recruiting a sufficient number of patients from a relatively homogeneous pool. Stratifying patients, based on their apoE genotype has been suggested as a way to improve these odds. Apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4) carriers are at high risk for getting AD at a younger age than are apoE3 or apoE2 carriers, for example. And the apoE4 allele is always associated with a long TOMM40 variant. However, apoE3s and apoE2s have either a long or a short TOMM40 variant, which is suggested to be associated with a different degree of risk for AD.

"Our method can screen hundreds of samples by one worker in just a few days, to determine both APOE genotype and TOMM40 variant," says Dr. Steven Greco, Vice President of Research & Development at Neurotez.