Analysis of the Human Plasma Proteome Using Multi-Nanoparticle Protein Corona for Detection of Alzheimer's Disease.

As the population affected by Alzheimer's disease (AD) grows, so does the need for a noninvasive and accurate diagnostic tool. Current research reveals that AD pathogenesis begins as early as decades before clinical symptoms. The unique properties of nanoparticles (NPs) may be exploited to develop noninvasive diagnostics for early detection of AD. After exposure of NPs to biological fluids, the NP surface is altered by an unbiased but selective and reproducible adsorption of biomolecules commonly referred to as the biomolecular corona or protein corona (PC). The discovery that the plasma proteome may be differentially altered during health and disease leads to the concept of disease-specific PCs. Herein, the disease-specific PCs formed around NPs in a multi-NPs platform are employed to successfully identify subtle changes in plasma protein patterns and detect AD (>92% specificity and ≈100% sensitivity). Similar discrimination power is achieved using banked plasma samples from a cohort of patients several years prior to their diagnosis with AD. With the nanoplatform's analytic ability to analyze pathological proteomic changes into a disease-specific identifier, this promising, noninvasive technology with implications for early detection and intervention could benefit not only patients with AD but other diseases as well.

Open Targets: a platform for therapeutic target identification and validation.

We have designed and developed a data integration and visualization platform that provides evidence about the association of known and potential drug targets with diseases. The platform is designed to support identification and prioritization of biological targets for follow-up. Each drug target is linked to a disease using integrated genome-wide data from a broad range of data sources. The platform provides either a target-centric workflow to identify diseases that may be associated with a specific target, or a disease-centric workflow to identify targets that may be associated with a specific disease. Users can easily transition between these target- and disease-centric workflows. The Open Targets Validation Platform is accessible at https://www.targetvalidation.org.