Ryan Dhindsa, MD, PhD

Breakthrough CURE ONE, CURE MANY AWARD IN NEUROINFlammation

Petabyte-Scale Association Studies to Investigate the Viral Etiology of Alzheimer’s Disease 

Institution: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 

Co-Principal Investigators and Institutions: Artem Babaian, PhD, University of Toronto and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Many chronic neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, have been linked to viral infections, such as SARS-Cov2, HSV-1, and VZV. These viruses cause neuroinflammation, which contributes to the effects of neurodegeneration. But scientists don’t yet know which viruses contribute to Alzheimer’s risk or why some individuals seem to be more susceptible than others to these viral infections. 

Drs. Dhindsa, Babaian, Lareau, and their teams will work on comprehensively mapping the viral associations with Alzheimer’s disease using an innovative “systems virology” approach. Systems virology integrates computational tools to study all aspects of viruses and viral diseases. The team will leverage AI to analyze millions of gigabytes of data, and through this effort, they will identify human genetic variations that increase the risk of virally triggered Alzheimer’s disease. They will also perform experiments to unravel the underlying molecular mechanisms of how these viruses cause neurodegeneration. These studies could enable new antiviral and vaccination strategies to treat Alzheimer’s. 

This $2 million Breakthrough award is funded in collaboration with the National MS Society, Gates Ventures, NFL Players Association, Genentech, and WoodNext Foundation.