Asian Cohort for Alzheimer's Disease (ACAD)

Overall Abstract Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects 5.8 million people in the United States and is an immense burden on our economy, patients and caregivers. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully led to 25 genome-wide significant loci associated with AD risk and many more associations with key clinical covariates. Most of these findings are made on participants with European ancestry, although efforts to study other minority populations are taking off. Knowledge about AD genetics among Asian Americans is especially limited due to lack of participants. Comprising 6% of the US populace, Asian Americans are under-sampled and deserve more scientific investment. We propose the Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACAD), the first large Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) genetics cohort for Asians in United States (US) and Canada. To address recruitment barriers, we assembled a team of scientists, clinicians, and community partners with collaborative history and expertise in AD research, human genetics, and Asian community outreach. We propose to recruit 5,081 participants aged 60 years or older and of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese ancestry from metropolitan areas across US and Canada in collaboration with community health providers or long-term care facilities that serve Asian communities. We will collect DNA and plasma biomarkers and use validated, translated data collection forms and clinical/diagnostic protocols. To support these recruitment and data collection activities, we will form six Cores that provide administrative oversite, outreach, clinical expertise, data management, biosample management, and training and quality assurance to support recruitment and analysis activities. All samples will be genotyped using SNP arrays and imputed using a large Asian-specific reference panel of whole genome sequencing data from international Asian cohorts. We propose two Research Projects that will analyze genetic, biomarker and clinical data to investigate impact of lifestyle risk factors, genetic variants for AD risk, evaluate differential effects of sex and APOE genotypes on AD risk, and predict clinical diagnosis of AD using genetic and lifestyle risk scores. We will replicate these findings through meta-analysis collaborations with international Asian cohorts and AD studies from other populations.