Alzheimer’s Disease: Next Generation Researchers

AlzhEimer's Disease: Next Generation Researchers

The complexity of research into the genetic architecture of Alzheimer’s requires collaboration across dozens of institutions, including seasoned leaders along with the faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and PhD candidates who make up their teams.

In collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium, we have developed a new multi-institutional seminar series highlighting team members who represent the next generation of Alzheimer’s Disease researchers. Their work contributes to the understanding of Alzheimer’s disease mechanism, with the goal of improving diagnosis and treatment.

Each quarter, we highlight one of our colleague’s work.

Giuseppe Tosto, MD, PhD

Dr. Tosto will present on The role of genetic ancestry in Alzheimer’s Disease on January 12, 2022.

The role of genetic ancestry in Alzheimer’s Disease

Hispanic/Latinx populations are underrepresented in Alzheimer’s Disease research, even though these groups are at higher risk than non-Hispanic Whites. Ancestry is an understudied aspect of health disparities, as it may explain differences in frequency of diseases across populations. Genome-wide association and sequencing studies have identified many disease-associated genetic variants that are highly differentiated across populations, some of which are population-specific. These variants may impact disease risk and help explain a portion of the difference in disease burden among racial/ethnic groups. This presentation will cover recent projects carried out in Dr. Tosto’s lab that leverage genetic ancestry to study health disparities and its implication in precision medicine.

Guiseppe Tosto, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Neurology

Taub Institute and the Gertrude Sergievsky Center

Columbia University

Dr. Tosto is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Columbia University (NY). After obtaining his Medical Degree, he completed the residency program in Neurology at University “La Sapienza” in Rome (Italy). He joined the Memory Clinic Unit where he conducted clinical work, clinical research and supervised clinical trials for Alzheimer’s Disease. He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience at the same university and subsequently joined Columbia University first as a post-doc and then as an Assistant Professor of Neurology. Since then, he has been studying the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease with a specific focus on admixed populations. He has completed genome-wide association and sequencing studies on admixed populations as well the first transcriptome-wise association study on Caribbean Hispanics. He currently holds NIH/NIA funded projects recruiting Central and South Americans participants to study dementia and aging traits.

Find Dr. Tosto’s publications here.