The AgedBrainSYSBIO project on systems biology of synapse proteins & ageing was officially launched March 18th in Paris, France. AgedBrainSYSBIO is a European collaborative research project funded by the European Commission under the Health Work Programme of the 7th Framework Programme. This multidisciplinary consortium assembles 14 academic and industrial internationally renowned research teams from Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Israel, United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Ageing is undisputedly a complex process because it affects the deterioration of most (if not all) aspects of life. Cognitive decline is emerging as one of the greatest public health challenges of the old age, with nearly 50% of adults over 85 afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, the most common type of dementia.
As other chronic and neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's disease develops slowly and gradually; but is distinctive in that it forces patients to endure many years of steadily-lessening contact with others, because of memory loss, difficulty with orientation, loss of language and speaking abilities, judging things and depression amongst numerous other symptoms. In 2013, it is estimated that there are worldly more than 24 million people with Alzheimer's disease, with 4.6 million new cases each year, which means a new case each 7 seconds. It is thus one of the greatest challenges in public health for modern societies, in terms of costs but also in terms of cause, cure and care. To address all these issues, European Commission-funded research effort is crucial as there are still no curative drugs, with only symptomatic treatment able to delay the disease progression.
Over the last years, Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have been instrumental to identify genes that mediate genetic risk associated to Late-Onset Alzheimer Diseases (LOAD). These approaches based on the genetic comparison of large cohorts of patients and healthy aged persons, and for which three academic partners have been involved (Inserm U894; Institut Pasteur Lille, University of Antwerpen), have been largely funded by Europe. Additionally, a variety of new sets of data have been built and have delivered the state-of-the art of protein-protein interactions, their localisation in subregions of human neurons and genome-wide transcriptome analysis of human neurons derived from aged patient fibroblasts. In another field, new drosophila and mouse models have been also generated via academic partners involved in European Commission-supported large-scale programmes. Finally, the analysis of genes displaying an accelerated evolution in humans as non-human primates do not display these human-specific neurodegenerative diseases has open interesting research paths. So far however, in spite of a huge amount of data available and existing in vitro and in vivo models, these approaches have not been successfully translated into the clinic separately.
The AgedBrainSYSBIO will take advantage of these large set of data, will cross them to other large-scale ageing databases and will include all of these know-how, technologies and results. Thanks to the involvement of four European SMEs, this program is expected to get results readily translated into preclinical studies.