Integrating transcriptomics with metabolic modeling predicts biomarkers and drug targets for Alzheimer's disease

PLoS One. 2014 Aug 15;9(8):e105383. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105383. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Accumulating evidence links numerous abnormalities in cerebral metabolism with the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), beginning in its early stages. Here, we integrate transcriptomic data from AD patients with a genome-scale computational human metabolic model to characterize the altered metabolism in AD, and employ state-of-the-art metabolic modelling methods to predict metabolic biomarkers and drug targets in AD. The metabolic descriptions derived are first tested and validated on a large scale versus existing AD proteomics and metabolomics data. Our analysis shows a significant decrease in the activity of several key metabolic pathways, including the carnitine shuttle, folate metabolism and mitochondrial transport. We predict several metabolic biomarkers of AD progression in the blood and the CSF, including succinate and prostaglandin D2. Vitamin D and steroid metabolism pathways are enriched with predicted drug targets that could mitigate the metabolic alterations observed. Taken together, this study provides the first network wide view of the metabolic alterations associated with AD progression. Most importantly, it offers a cohort of new metabolic leads for the diagnosis of AD and its treatment.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alzheimer Disease / diagnosis
  • Alzheimer Disease / metabolism*
  • Biomarkers / metabolism
  • Gene Expression Profiling*
  • Humans
  • Metabolic Networks and Pathways
  • Transcriptome

Substances

  • Biomarkers

Grants and funding

E.R.'s research is supported by a grant from the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) and Israeli Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) to E.R. and by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation (grant No 41/11). S.S. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Joseph Sagol Fellowship for brain research at Tel Aviv University. K.Y. is partially supported by a fellowship from the Edmond J. Safra Bioinformatics center at Tel-Aviv University and is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for the award of an Azrieli Fellowship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.