The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University

Published purpose

Aging is the predominant risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementias. Recently, DNA methylation has been used to estimate the brain age and the brain age acceleration (defined as the difference between its biological and chronological ages) has been linked to increased risk of AD and other dementias. It remains an open question whether the brain’s accelerated aging can be inferred from DNA methylation obtained from easily accessible tissues such as peripheral blood. The main objective of this project is to identify peripheral blood epigenetic biomarkers for brain age, AD and other dementias and develop a predictive machine learning model for evaluating disease risk. Such a predictor would identify those people at greatest risk of developing the disease earlier, when disease modifying therapies are deemed most effective, reducing the need for long-term care and increasing quality of life.