Event:

Abstract

Non-coding RNAs in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases

Andre Fischer1,2,3,4
1Department for Systems Medicine and Epigenetics, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Göttingen, Germany
2Cluster of Excellence Multiscale Bioimaging: from Molecular Machines to Networks of Excitable Cells (MBExC), University of Göttingen, Germany
3Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
4DZHK (German Center for Cardiovascular Research), partner site Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.



Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a chronic and devastating condition that presents an overwhelming emotional, physical, and economic burden for patients and their caregivers. Translational research over the past decades has focused on the coding portion of the genome, particularly genes that are translated into proteins, which serve specific functions and may become deregulated in AD. However, only 1.5% of the human genome encodes proteins, while most of the genome (70%) is transcribed into non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), which were long considered junk. Recent discoveries, however, have highlighted the crucial role of ncRNAs as pivotal regulators of various cellular processes, thereby expanding the space for drug discovery. Indeed, recent years have witnessed a revolution in our understanding of ncRNA functions, and the development of RNA-based drugs (RNA therapeutics) is a rapidly expanding research field. In this presentation, I will share recent data from our group aiming to understand the small and long non-coding RNAome in brain diseases, with a focus on AD, while also covering neuropsychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia. Specifically, I will discuss our latest research on microRNAs and lncRNAs as biomarkers for the early detection of patients at risk for AD and our efforts to identify brain and cell-type-specific ncRNAs, which we study at the functional level, as therapeutic targets.