Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias affect millions of people worldwide, yet few effective options exist for preventing or treating these conditions. One promising approach is drug repurposing, which examines whether medicines already approved for other health conditions could also benefit people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
Supported by a $148,445 research grant from the Alzheimer’s Association, Tiansheng Wang, Pharm.D., Ph.D., is leading a study that will combine real-world health data, genetic information and brain imaging to identify existing medications that may warrant further investigation as potential treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
The project addresses limitations in current drug-repurposing research, which often relies on individual sources of information and may overlook early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans can reveal changes associated with the disease years before symptoms appear, while genetic information such as Apoliprotein E (APOE) status, the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's, may provide additional insight into a person’s risk.
Wang’s research will use data from the UK Biobank and the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center to evaluate potential drug-repurposing candidates. The study will first use UK Biobank data to assess candidate medications through rigorous causal-inference methods designed to emulate important features of a clinical trial. Findings will then be validated using an independent National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center dataset.
In collaboration with co-investigator Guorong Wu, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert in medical image analysis and machine learning, the research team will also apply artificial intelligence and deep-learning methods to analyze brain images and determine whether certain medications are associated with changes in brain structure. By integrating these data sources, the study aims to identify promising drug candidates that may be missed when medication use, genetics, cognitive assessments and neuroimaging are examined separately.
The study is not intended to recommend that patients begin taking any specific medication for Alzheimer’s disease. Instead, the goal is to identify the most promising candidates for additional validation and, ultimately, clinical trials.
“Developing a new medicine from the beginning can take many years," Wang said. "Our goal is to use existing health data, genetic information, and brain images to identify medicines already used for other conditions that may deserve rigorous testing for Alzheimer’s disease.
“By bringing these different sources of information together, we hope to identify promising signals that could be missed when each source is studied separately.”