( /P> In a January 2007 online issue of...)A new century of Alzheimer's disease research,Health

In a January 2007 online issue of Nature Genetics, the researchers reported a new gene called SORL1 (sortilin-related receptor). They found that people who inherited certain variations of SORL1 appear to have an increased risk of developing the late-onset form of Alzheimer’s. Although they have not pinpointed the exact variations, the researchers connected the gene to disease in six different groups of people, finding that Caucasians who have Alzheimer’s displayed a variation in one area of the gene’s sequence, while African-Americans, Hispanics and a group of Arabs with the disease displayed variations in a different location. Almost 7,000 people, of whom about half had the disease, were included in the analysis.

In cell culture studies, the researchers found that decreasing the amount of SORL1 protein increased the cells’ production of AB.

While SORL1 will likely turn out to be a minor contributor to Alzheimer’s disease in general, adding all such players together could ultimately provide the missing puzzle pieces that solve the disease, Dr. Younkin says.

“Alzheimer’s is a great disease for doing genetics, because there are clear indications that a person has the disease, which makes it possible to test that individual’s DNA and RNA,” he says. Those genes never change, so profiling the more than 300,000 functional inherited variations in the approximately 30,000 genes each person has can define Alzheimer’s disease’s complex genetic signature, he says.

“We can now look at the difference in gene variants between a person who has Alzheimer’s and a person who does not; an analysis like that would only take several days,” Dr. Younkin says. “If we can find those variations in thousands of people, we could begin to see which genes play important roles in Alzheimer’s disease, and these genes could possibly be targets for novel therapeutic agents.”

“It is all possible to do, which is wonderful,” he says, but adds that while
'"/>