Exploration of unique chimeras as biomarkers in Alzheimer`s disease

Dementia is a common disorder in the elderly age and expected to affect 135 million individuals by 2050. The main cause of dementia is Alzheimer`s disease (AD), which is characterized by accumulation of Amyloid-beta peptide, hyperphosphorylated tau protein and brain atrophy. AD patients have synaptic dysfunction and neuronal degeneration in several brain regions including the hippocampus, frontal cortex and amygdala. Until today only a few genes were tied with AD and there is no available drug that can cure early or late onset of AD.

Liquid biopsy is non-invasive technique for detecting disease-related biomarkers in body fluids. We wish to study chimeras using this technique in order to find unique signature of AD related chimeras in CSF and plasma. To date, there is no unique biochemical test that can diagnose AD, excluding post mortem biopsies. Therefore, establishing Liquid Biopsy platform for AD will enable a simple and novel method to detect AD patient, hopefully in their early stages, and discover biomarkers that may be used as drug targets for treating the disease. We suggested to use chimeric transcripts as biomarkers have not been tested in AD yet. In our study, we found computationally unique chimeric transcripts that involve parental genes known to be associated with AD. Moreover, other novel chimeras were not previously associated with AD. Therefore, we attempt to validate the predicted chimeric transcripts in AD cortex biopsies and CSF, and then use them as unique biomarkers or drug targets in Liquid Biopsy platform for early diagnostics of AD.