The Role of Genes in Alzheimer's Disease

The genetics of Alzheimer's disease are a little bit more complicated. Unfortunately, we don't see a very clear pattern in Alzheimer's pathology. There are a few genes out there that are associated with very young onset of Alzheimer's disease. And often there's a very strong family history – these are the presenilin genes. And these families are quite rare.

In the wider space, there is an association with people who have, if you like, more standard Alzheimer's disease – the disease that comes on in your 60s 70s 80s, with a thing called a ApoE or Apo-Epsilon E genes. And interestingly we do see a higher frequency of cases of Alzheimer's disease in those people who've got two copies of that ApoE4 gene. And that does seem to be related to Alzheimer's. But in actual fact, there's a whole lot of people out there who've got this gene and never get Alzheimer's. But these genes when we see them in diseases, give us clues as to what might be causing the disease, and very importantly for our targeting therapies in the future, towards trying to treat and even cure these diseases.