Caribbean Omics & Genomics for Alzheimer Study (CONGAS)

Caribbean Omics & Genomics for Alzheimer Study (CONGAS) is sponsored by National Institute on Aging (NIH). This grant supports a study investigating genetic and molecular factors behind Alzheimer's prevalence in Caribbean populations to enhance personalized care, diagnostics, and treatment strategies.

$12 million NIH grant supports study of Alzheimer’s risk factors | Hope Center for Neurological Disorders | Washington University in St. Louis Researchers at WashU Medicine will investigate genetic and molecular factors behind Alzheimer’s prevalence in Caribbean populations. This groundbreaking study, supported by NIH funding, aims to enhance personalized care, diagnostics and treatment strategies for patients worldwide.

(Photo: Getty Images) Building on its longstanding leadership in Alzheimer’s disease genetics and biomarkers, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has launched the Caribbean Omics & Genomics for Alzheimer Study (CONGAS) with the support of a five-year, $12 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The central mission of CONGAS is to understand why Alzheimer’s disproportionately affects Caribbean and Hispanic populations and identify the genetic and molecular drivers behind this disparity. Ultimately, these insights will bring scientists closer to more precise and personalized diagnostic tools and treatments and help identify new drug targets.

The collaborative project is driven by Carlos Cruchaga, PhD , the Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III Professor in the Department of Psychiatry; Jorge Llibre-Guerra, MD , an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology; and Laura Ibanez, PhD , an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, all at WashU Medicine.

A fourth collaborator, Victoria Fernandez, PhD, began the work while at WashU Medicine and is now head of the genomics unit at ACE Alzheimer Center Barcelona in Spain. The study will characterize genetic data, blood biomarkers and large-scale proteomics from about 5,000 people in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Spain.

These data will then be integrated with more than 70,000 additional genomes, including more than 10,000 from Hispanic and Latino participants from the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), an NIH-funded effort to broaden Alzheimer’s research in the U.S. beyond European-ancestry populations.

Cruchaga, Llibre-Guerra and their collaborators will analyze this massive dataset to discover new risk factors and modifiers to determine whether genes known to be involved in Alzheimer’s exert different effects in people of Caribbean ancestry. “Countries in the Caribbean provide the ideal environment to dissect genetic risk,” said Cruchaga, who is also the founding director of the NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center at WashU Medicine.

“Because they reflect a long history of genetic mixing among people of African, European and Native American ancestry, the known risk genes for Alzheimer’s disease may behave very differently in this population, or novel risk variants not seen in European cohorts may be driving disease.

By studying people with an array of different genetic backgrounds, we can discover new risk factors and protective factors, which we can model for potential new interventions and drugs. ”