Alzheimer's Disease Working Group Leadership
Work with us!
If you have questions regarding the PGC Alzheimer Disease workgroup or projects that are currently being conducted, please contact the workgroup chairs.
For any questions or ideas related to research dissemination (e.g., via this webpage, social media, blogs, press outlets), please contact the workgroup outreach liaison.
If you have questions about how to access summary statistics or genotype-level data, or are interested to submit a secondary analysis proposal, please contact the workgroup data access committee representative (Coming Soon!).
About Us
Our History
The Alzheimer’s disease Working Group (PGC-ALZ) is a relatively young group that was initiated in 2016 by Danielle Posthuma and Ole Andreassen. This collaborative effort shares the main ambition to identify novel genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease to contribute to better understanding of the underlying disease pathology that is required for the development of improved treatment in the future. After the first two years of intensive data collection, by gathering public genetic data and launching new collaborations, the first GWAS paper was published early 2019 (PMID 30617256).
Our Motivation
- Discover novel genetic risk factors and identify potential drug targets
- Work closely with scientist that functionally follow up well defined risk loci
- Characterize the genetic architecture, such as genetic heterogeneity
- Work closely with clinicians to translate the findings to clinical setting for precision medicine application (polygenic risk prediction tools)
- Increase our knowledge about trans-ancestry genetic risk factors - beyond Europeans
- Facilitate the collaboration between international genetics Alzheimer’s disease consortia
- Constantly increase the number of participants to improve power
Get Involved!
The PGC-ALZ members stay connected and updated with regular conference calls. If you are also interested in becoming a PGC-ALZ member, we welcome your participation and are eager to collaborate with investigators who might be willing to share raw genotypic data or effect sizes. If you are interested in learning more about our group, please contact Ole Andreassen.
Publications
Jansen IE, Savage JE, Watanabe K, Bryois J, Williams DM, Steinberg S, … Posthuma D (2019). Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new loci and functional pathways influencing Alzheimer’s disease risk. Nature Genetics, 51, 404-413. https://www-nature-com.vu-nl.idm.oclc.org/articles/s41588-018-0311-9%C2%A0
Drange OK, Smeland OB, Shadrin AA, Finseth PI, Witoelar A, Frei O (2019). Genetic overlap between Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorder implicates the MARK2 and VAC14 genes. Frontiers in Neuroscience doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2019.00220
Wightman DP, Jansen IE, Savage JE, Shadrin AA, Bahrami S, Rongve A, … Posthuma D (2020). Largest GWAS (N=1,126,563) of Alzheimer’s Disease Implicates Microglia and Immune Cells. MedRxiv doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.20.20235275
Funders
