Publications by authors named "Cruchaga Carlos"

High-throughput proteomic platforms are crucial to identify novel Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers and pathways. In this study, we evaluated the reproducibility and reliability of aptamer-based (SomaScan 7k) and antibody-based (Olink Explore 3k) proteomic platforms in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples from the Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona real-world cohort. Intra- and inter-platform reproducibility were evaluated through correlations between two independent SomaScan assays analyzing the same samples, and between SomaScan and Olink results.

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Case-only designs in longitudinal cohorts are a valuable resource for identifying disease-relevant genes, pathways, and novel targets influencing disease progression. This is particularly relevant in Alzheimer's disease (AD), where longitudinal cohorts measure disease "progression," defined by rate of cognitive decline. Few of the identified drug targets for AD have been clinically tractable, and phenotypic heterogeneity is an obstacle to both clinical research and basic science.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing scientific discovery because of its super capability, following the neural scaling laws, to integrate and analyze large-scale datasets to mine knowledge. Foundation models, large language models (LLMs) and large vision models (LVMs), are among the most important foundations paving the way for general AI by pre-training on massive domain-specific datasets. Different from the well annotated, formatted and integrated large textual and image datasets for LLMs and LVMs, biomedical knowledge and datasets are fragmented with data scattered across publications and inconsistent databases that often use diverse nomenclature systems in the field of AI for Precision Health and Medicine (AI4PHM).

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Article Synopsis
  • Research highlights the significant role of immune processes in the development of Alzheimer's disease, which is the leading cause of dementia.
  • Various studies indicate that both innate and adaptive immune responses contribute to the disease's pathology and are influenced by genetics and lifestyle factors.
  • New therapeutic approaches targeting neuroinflammation are being explored in clinical settings, offering potential treatment options for Alzheimer's patients.
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  • A study was conducted to investigate the X-chromosome's role in Alzheimer's Disease (AD), which had been overlooked in previous genome-wide association studies.
  • The research included 115,841 AD cases and 613,671 controls, considering different X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) states in females.
  • While no strong genetic risk factors for AD were found on the X-chromosome, seven significant loci were identified, suggesting areas for future research.
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Introduction: In the research setting, obtaining accurate established biomarker measurements and maximizing use of the precious samples is key. Accurate technologies are available for Alzheimer's disease (AD), but no platform can measure all the established and emerging biomarkers in one run. The NUcleic acid Linked Immuno-Sandwich Assay (NULISA) is a technology that requires 15 µL of sample to measure more than 100 analytes.

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To identify circRNAs associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) we leveraged two of the largest publicly available studies with longitudinal clinical and blood transcriptomic data. We performed a cross-sectional study utilizing the last visit of each participant (N = 1848), and a longitudinal analysis that included 1166 participants with at least two time points. We identified 192 differentially expressed circRNAs, with effects that were sustained during disease, in mutation carriers, and diverse ancestry.

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  • A genome-wide association study was conducted to analyze cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and brain metabolite levels, revealing 205 associations for CSF metabolites and 32 for brain metabolites, with a significant portion being new signals.
  • The research found that most new signals for CSF (96.9%) and brain metabolites (71.4%) were related to previously studied metabolites in blood and urine.
  • The study identified 71 metabolite-trait associations linked to various neurological and psychiatric conditions, enhancing understanding of how brain metabolism may influence human traits and diseases.
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The integration of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with disease genome-wide association studies (GWASs) has proven successful in prioritizing candidate genes at disease-associated loci. QTL mapping has been focused on multi-tissue expression QTLs or plasma protein QTLs (pQTLs). We generated a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pQTL atlas by measuring 6,361 proteins in 3,506 samples.

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Motivation: Multi-omics data, i.e. genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, characterize cellular complex signaling systems from multi-level and multi-view and provide a holistic view of complex cellular signaling pathways.

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Background: While numerous studies have identified blood proteins that modulate brain aging in mice, the direct translation of these findings to human health remains a substantial challenge. Bridging this gap is critical for developing interventions that can effectively target human brain aging and associated diseases.

Methods: We first identified 12 proteins with aging or rejuvenating properties in murine brains through a systematic review.

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  • Breast cancer (BC) has distinct molecular subtypes influenced by different cell origins, yet the transcriptional networks for these subtypes are not well understood.
  • This study utilized advanced techniques on 61 samples from 37 BC patients to reveal how gene expression and chromatin accessibility connect BC subtypes to their likely cells of origin.
  • Key transcription factors BHLHE40 and KLF5 were found to play crucial roles in luminal and basal-like tumors, respectively, and exhausted CD8 T cells were linked to immune dysfunction in basal-like BC, showcasing the potential of single-cell level analysis in understanding cancer lineages.
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Plasma phosphorylated-tau 217 (p-tau217) is currently the most promising biomarker for reliable detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. Various p-tau217 assays have been developed, but their relative performance is unclear. We compared key plasma p-tau217 tests using cross-sectional and longitudinal measures of amyloid-β (Aβ)-PET, tau-PET, and cognition as outcomes, and benchmarked them against cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker tests.

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  • * In Alzheimer's disease, these networks become more chaotic, as indicated by a drop in the small-world coefficient, a change linked to cognitive decline throughout the disease's progression.
  • * Our study examined the relationship between 10 cerebrospinal fluid protein biomarkers and small-world coefficients in Alzheimer's mutation carriers and non-carriers, finding that certain protein abnormalities indicate early changes in grey matter networks, while markers for inflammation and axonal injury correlate with declining small-world values.
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In this high-throughput proteomic study of autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease (ADAD), we sought to identify early biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for disease monitoring and treatment strategies. We examined CSF proteins in 286 mutation carriers (MCs) and 177 non-carriers (NCs). The developed multi-layer regression model distinguished proteins with different pseudo-trajectories between these groups.

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Background: Ischemic stroke (IS) represents a significant health burden globally, necessitating a better understanding of its genetic underpinnings to improve prevention and treatment strategies. Despite advances in IS genetics, studies focusing on the Spanish population and sex-stratified analyses are lacking.

Methods: A case-control genome-wide association study was conducted with 9081 individuals (3493 IS cases and 5588 healthy controls).

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  • The study investigates the genetic factors contributing to Alzheimer's disease by analyzing tau deposition through a genome-wide association study involving 3,046 participants.
  • It identifies the CYP1B1-RMDN2 locus as significantly linked to tau levels, with the variant rs2113389 explaining 4.3% of tau variation, while also correlating with cognitive decline.
  • Findings suggest a connection between CYP1B1 expression and tau deposition, offering potential new avenues for Alzheimer's treatment and understanding its genetic basis.
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  • A large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) was conducted with over 6000 participants to investigate genetic risk factors for isolated dystonia, aiming to improve upon earlier studies that found no significant genetic links.
  • The study included 4303 dystonia patients and 2362 healthy controls, analyzing various factors like age of onset and affected body areas, but ultimately failed to identify any common genetic variants associated with dystonia.
  • The findings suggest that isolated dystonia may not be influenced by common genetic variations, highlighting the need for more extensive studies like whole-genome sequencing to uncover potential genetic contributions.
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  • The study examines the link between protective lifestyle factors and the age at symptom onset of autosomal dominant Alzheimer disease (ADAD), which is largely influenced by genetics, focusing on how resilience-related experiences may impact this relationship.
  • The researchers analyzed data from the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network, assessing both clinical and lifestyle factors in two groups: one looking at general resilience among people showing cognitive stability despite high pathology and another focusing on specific genetic timelines for ADAD.
  • Findings from 320 participants indicate variations in age at onset among carriers based on lifestyle and resilience factors, revealing potential avenues for understanding how these influences might delay the onset of symptoms in genetically predisposed individuals.
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Background: Few rare variants have been identified in genetic loci from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of Alzheimer's disease (AD), limiting understanding of mechanisms, risk assessment, and genetic counseling.

Methods: Using genome sequencing data from 197 families in the National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's Disease Family Based Study and 214 Caribbean Hispanic families, we searched for rare coding variants within known GWAS loci from the largest published study.

Results: Eighty-six rare missense or loss-of-function (LoF) variants completely segregated in 17.

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Several studies have identified blood proteins that influence brain aging performance in mice, yet translating these findings to humans remains challenging. Here we found that higher predicted plasma levels of Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinases 2 (TIMP2) were significantly associated with improved global cognition and memory performance in humans. We first identified 12 proteins with aging or rejuvenating effects on murine brains through a systematic review.

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This manuscript describes and summarizes the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network Observational Study (DIAN Obs), highlighting the wealth of longitudinal data, samples, and results from this human cohort study of brain aging and a rare monogenic form of Alzheimer's disease (AD). DIAN Obs is an international collaborative longitudinal study initiated in 2008 with support from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), designed to obtain comprehensive and uniform data on brain biology and function in individuals at risk for autosomal dominant AD (ADAD). ADAD gene mutations in the amyloid protein precursor (), presenilin 1 (), or presenilin 2 () genes are deterministic causes of ADAD, with virtually full penetrance, and a predictable age at symptomatic onset.

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Introduction: Biomarkers have been essential to understanding Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis, pathophysiology, progression, and treatment effects. However, each biomarker measure is a representation of the biological target, the assay used to measure it, and the variance of the assay. Thus, biomarker measures are difficult to compare without standardization, and the units and magnitude of effect relative to the disease are difficult to appreciate, even for experts.

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Initially focused on the European population, multiple genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of complex diseases, such as type-2 diabetes (T2D), have now extended to other populations. However, to date, few ancestry-matched omics datasets have been generated or further integrated with the disease GWAS to nominate the key genes and/or molecular traits underlying the disease risk loci. In this study, we generated and integrated plasma proteomics and metabolomics with array-based genotype datasets of European (EUR) and African (AFR) ancestries to identify ancestry-specific muti-omics quantitative trait loci (QTLs).

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This study explored the role of the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) in dominantly inherited Alzheimer's disease (DIAD) by examining changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of UPS proteins along with disease progression, AD imaging biomarkers (PiB PET, tau PET), neurodegeneration imaging measures (MRI, FDG PET), and Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR). Using the SOMAscan assay, we detected subtle increases in specific ubiquitin enzymes associated with proteostasis in mutation carriers (MCs) up to two decades before the estimated symptom onset. This was followed by more pronounced elevations of UPS-activating enzymes, including E2 and E3 proteins, and ubiquitin-related modifiers.

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