New gene uncovered for late-onset A...( e Taub Institute for Research on Alzhei...)

e Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain. The team at the University of Toronto was led by Peter St. George-Hyslop, M.D., director of the Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the Boston University team by Lindsay Farrer, Ph.D., chief of the Genetics Program. Steven Younkin, M.D., Ph.D., chair of Department of Pharmacology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Jacksonville, Fla. also provided DNA samples from the Mayo's respective unique populations for the study.

"The importance of the finding is that it opens new pathways to explore the cause and as well as potential targets for treatment of this devastating disease," said Dr. Mayeux. "SORL1 represents another critical piece of the Alzheimer's disease puzzle. This appears to be the fifth Alzheimer's disease gene, and there are likely to be other important genetic variants that need to be identified before the entire picture is complete."

"Instead of scanning all the genes in the entire genome, we had an idea of what an Alzheimer's disease-causing gene would look like based on past discoveries," said Dr. St. George-Hyslop. "We knew that the abnormalities in APP processing and the accumulation of its toxic amyloid beta (A) peptide derivative cause Alzheimer's, so we hypothesized that other genes associated with APP regulation might also cause the disease."

Genetic Homogeneity of Dominican Population Tapped for Discovery

In 1994, Dr. Mayeux noticed, upon studying elderly residents of Washington Heights, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in Northern Manhattan where Columbia University Medical Center is located, that Dominicans have about three times the rate of Alzheimer's disease compared to individuals of different ethnic backgrounds in the community. Dr. Mayeux decided to find out why this population has such a high incidence of Alzheimer's, so he and his Columbia team began visiting Dominican families living in bot
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Contact: Elizabeth Streich
eas2125@columbia.edu
212-305-6535
Columbia University Medical Center
14-Jan-2007

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