Vanderbilt Joins International Consortium on Alzheimer’s on Nashville Medical News

Vanderbilt Joins International Consortium on Alzheimer’s

By: CINDY SANDERS

Dr. Haines and graduate student Anna Cummings aliquoting DNA samples from a study at Vanderbilt.

Project Hopes to Decipher Genetic Coding

Why do some people show signs of Alzheimer’s at age 50, others at 80, and some never at all? What triggers the disease? Why are some medicines more effective in certain populations? Is there a cure … or at least a way to delay onset and significantly slow progress?

These are some of the mysteries that continue to plague Alzheimer’s disease researchers. A newly formed consortium of international experts, however, hopes to discover and map all the genes related to the disease as the starting point to finding answers. The formation of the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (IGAP) was announced last month. (See related story below.)

The collaborative effort mines the work already being done by four consortia in North America and Europe and brings each group’s discoveries under one umbrella organization to more quickly fit pieces of the Alzheimer’s puzzle together. Participants are the European Alzheimer’s Disease Initiative (EADI), Genetic and Environmental Risk in Alzheimer’s Disease (GERAD), neurology subgroup of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE), and Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC). Vanderbilt University Medical Center is one of a small group of academic medical centers participating in ADGC, which is supported by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health.

“This is a fantastic opportunity for Vanderbilt to participate in a worldwide effort to understand the mysteries of Alzheimer’s diseases,” said Jonathan Haines, PhD, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Human Genetics Research and chief of the Division of Human Genomics for Vanderbilt’s School of Medicine. “By joining together with experts around the world, we will more quickly and completely unravel the genetic causes of this problem.”

It is a problem that Haines has wrestled with for 25 years. A member of ADGC’s executive committee and the national consortium’s principal investigator at Vanderbilt, Haines welcomed the opportunity to join with the other three international groups in the hope of moving more quickly toward answers.

“What we’re doing is putting together all the data that the groups have established so that we have a lot more ability to pick up the genetic signals that are involved in Alzheimer’s disease,” he said. The shared IGAP database includes genetic information for more than 40,000 individuals, split between Alzheimer’s patients and elderly healthy subjects. Moving forward, the consortium expects to add data on another 20,000 people divided evenly between control subjects and those with the disease.

Haines pointed out Alzheimer’s, which is estimated to affect 5.3 million people in the United States and upward of 35 million worldwide, was first described in literature in 1908. “We’ve made a lot of progress in understanding parts of it … in understanding what is happening,” he said of work done over the past 30 years. “Where we’ve made less progress is in stopping all that is happening.”

Currently, Haines said, “There are drugs out there that help some symptoms for some people some of the time. But,” he continued, “they don’t stop the process and taking these drugs won’t prevent Alzheimer’s.” Why the drugs work better for some rather than others remains a mystery, but Haines said researchers believe there are different genetic triggers. Although, he added, they don’t know that for sure.

Still, with each new gene discovery and improved technology, the picture becomes a little bit clearer. Haines said researchers are working on samples of DNA in brain tissue from those who have died from the progressive, fatal, neurodegenerative disorder and with DNA obtained from blood samples from both those living with the disease and from control individuals with no signs of abnormal cognitive impairment.

Already, a number of genes have been identified and several new ones have recently been implicated. “We can test to see how much of Alzheimer’s can be explained by these new genes we’re discovering. When those discoveries explain most of the genetic influence on Alzheimer’s disease, we’ll know by the effects,” he said.

By compiling international data, Haines said those involved with the newly formed IGAP project hope to accelerate the discovery process. “One of the first hopes is that might lead us pretty quickly or directly to drug targets,” he said. “You can screen for drug effects pretty quickly even without knowing much about the gene.”

However, he cautioned, “Even if that happens, we still need to understand a lot more about what these genes do … why these particular genes are implicated. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to understand the why.”

Those involved with IGAP recognize the pressure to decipher the Alzheimer’s genetic code will only intensify as the world’s population ages. Projections from Alzheimer’s Disease International estimate 65.7 million people worldwide will live with dementia by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050. The total estimated worldwide costs of dementia last year were $604 billion making this a problem with both a steep personal and financial toll.

“The skyrocketing prevalence and cost of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias will soon undermine the delivery of healthcare worldwide,” said ADGC chair Gerard Schellenberg, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “That gives innovative collaborations like this new international genomics project added incentive to act quickly and boldly to make new discoveries.”

Concluded Haines, “I think we’re getting closer. It’s not going to be tomorrow. It’s not going to be next year. We’re working hard to identify a number of genes. The more we know about this (disease), the closer we get to being able to do something about it.”

Related story

Sandler Named CEO, Executive Director of Abe’s Garden

Last month, Abe’s Garden announced the appointment of Andrew B. Sandler, PhD, as executive director and chief executive officer for the non-profit organization that seeks to establish a national model of residential living and daycare programs for those suffering with Alzheimer's.

Previously, Sandler was assisted living director for Weinberg Community for Senior Living, including its dementia unit and adult day program, in Deerfield, Ill. Before that, he served for eight years as administrator of Maison Hospitaliere, a skilled nursing facility in New Orleans. Sandler has also managed a 41-bed Alzheimer unit in Massachusetts. In addition to his deep experience in geriatric care, he has also taught at the college level and served as school psychologist for the St. John Parish School Board in Reserve, La. Sandler has had numerous journal articles published.

He holds three graduate degrees, including a Master of Health Administration from Tulane University, a doctorate in Special Education from the University of New Orleans, and a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology from Farleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J. He received his undergraduate degree in Psychology from DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.

Abe's Garden was founded with a gift from Mike Shmerling and his wife in memory of his late father, Abram “Abe” Shmerling, MD, for the purpose of creating a place for those with Alzheimer's and other dementia related diseases. Abe Shmerling, who died in 2006, retired from a 40-year medical practice when Alzheimer’s began to ravage his mind and body over a period of 11 years.