The Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium: Biomarker and Drug Target Discovery for Common Neurodegenerative Diseases and Aging

Authors

• Farhad Imam
• Rowan Saloner
• Jacob W Vogel
• Varsha Krish
• Gamal Abdel-Azim
• Muhammad Ali
• Lijun An
• Federica Anastasi
• David Bennett
• Alexa Pichet Binette
• Adam L Boxer
• Martin Bringmann
• Jeffrey M Burns
• Carlos Cruchaga
• Jeff L Dage
• Amelia Farinas
• Luigi Ferrucci
• Caitlin A Finney
• Mark Frasier
• Oskar Hansson
• Timothy J Hohman
• Erik C B Johnson
• Mika Kivimaki
• Roxanna Korologou-Linden
• Agustin Ruiz Laza
• Allan I Levey
• Inga Liepelt-Scarfone
• Lina Lu
• Niklas Mattsson-Carlgren
• Lefkos T Middleton
• Kwangsik Nho
• Hamilton Se-Hwee Oh
• Ronald C Petersen
• Eric M Reiman
• Oliver Robinson
• Jeffrey D Rothstein
• Andrew J Saykin
• Artur Shvetcov
• Chad Slawson
• Bart Smets
• Marc Suárez-Calvet
• Betty M Tijms
• Maarten Timmers
• Fernando Vieira
• Natalia Vilor-Tejedor
• Pieter Jelle Visser
• Keenan A Walker
• Laura M Winchester
• Tony Wyss-Coray
• Chengran Yang
• Niranjan Bose
• Simon Lovestone
• The Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium (GNPC)

Language

English

Publication Date

8-1-2025

Journal

Nature Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41591-025-03834-0

PMID

40665048

PMCID

PMC12353841

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

7-15-2025

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Abstract

More than 57 million people globally suffer from neurodegenerative diseases, a figure expected to double every 20 years. Despite this growing burden, there are currently no cures, and treatment options remain limited due to disease heterogeneity, prolonged preclinical and prodromal phases, poor understanding of disease mechanisms, and diagnostic challenges. Identifying novel biomarkers is crucial for improving early detection, prognosis, staging and subtyping of these conditions. High-dimensional molecular studies in biofluids ('omics') offer promise for scalable biomarker discovery, but challenges in assembling large, diverse datasets hinder progress. To address this, the Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium (GNPC)-a public-private partnership-established one of the world's largest harmonized proteomic datasets. It includes approximately 250 million unique protein measurements from multiple platforms from more than 35,000 biofluid samples (plasma, serum and cerebrospinal fluid) contributed by 23 partners, alongside associated clinical data spanning Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This dataset is accessible to GNPC members via the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative's AD Workbench, a secure cloud-based environment, and will be available to the wider research community on 15 July 2025. Here we present summary analyses of the plasma proteome revealing disease-specific differential protein abundance and transdiagnostic proteomic signatures of clinical severity. Furthermore, we describe a robust plasma proteomic signature of APOE ε4 carriership, reproducible across AD, PD, FTD and ALS, as well as distinct patterns of organ aging across these conditions. This work demonstrates the power of international collaboration, data sharing and open science to accelerate discovery in neurodegeneration research.

Keywords

Humans, Biomarkers, Proteomics, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Drug Discovery, Aging, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Parkinson Disease, Alzheimer Disease, Frontotemporal Dementia, Neurodegenerative diseases, Dementia, Biomarkers

Published Open-Access

yes

Recommended Citation

Imam, Farhad; Saloner, Rowan; Vogel, Jacob W; et al., "The Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium: Biomarker and Drug Target Discovery for Common Neurodegenerative Diseases and Aging" (2025). Faculty, Staff and Student Publications. 902.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/uthshis_docs/902