Leveraging multiomic approaches to elucidate mechanisms of heterogeneity in Alzheimer's disease: Neuropsychiatric symptoms, co-pathologies, and sex differences.

The heterogeneity of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is multi-dimensional, encompassing clinical features such as neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), rate of progression, age of onset, comorbidities, and neuropathological features such as co-pathologies, and represents the diverse outcomes of manifold genetic and environmental risk determinants. These diverse features of AD also vary significantly between sexes and across ancestral backgrounds, but the specific variations and causal mechanisms are not well understood. Recent technological advances, particularly single-cell and spatial omics, have provided new tools to dissect the molecular underpinnings of AD heterogeneity and its multifactorial nature. This perspective review highlights molecular differences, general and sex-specific, that contribute to the heterogeneity of AD in aspects such as NPS, co-pathology prevalence, and general disease trajectories. We further examined the potential for multiomic approaches to direct future translational studies aimed at the development of precision medicine strategies for the treatment of AD in all its diverse forms. HIGHLIGHTS: Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents diverse subtypes characterized by comorbid clinical symptoms and co-pathologies. Integration of bulk, single-cell, spatial multiomics reveals factors underlying AD variation. Multiomics studies indicate shared and distinct mechanisms between major psychiatric disorders and AD. Multiomics data have transformative implications for sex- and population-specific AD therapies. New tailored precision medicine strategies are needed to address the full range of complexity in AD.

Duke Scholars

Author Ornit Chiba-Falek Neurology, Translational Brain Sciences