RECETOX, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University
FOCUS AND RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
Biomarkers, risk factors and modifiers of neurodegeneration with cognitive impairment
Characterize internal exposure agents and metabolites in patients with neurodegenerative disorders with cognitive impairment and identify prognostic biomarkers and exposure agent risk factors
Numerous environmental risk factors have been proposed for neurocognitive impairment (NCI) and dementia (10.1186/s12877-016-0342-y; 10.1016/j.arr.2021.101504) and application of the exposome concept advocated to investigate Alzheimer’s disease (AD) (10.1016/j.jalz.2019.06.3914) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) (10.1136/OEM-2019-EPI.161).
Circulating metabolites are known to be associated with NCI and in recent years a few metabolite biomarkers for cognitive function or dementia have been validated in large-scale cohort studies (10.1016/j.jalz.2017.11.012). It is observed that many of these metabolite biomarkers are responses to exposure to chemical agents, such as pesticides (10.1038/srep32222) yet, mechanistic understanding of these disease-linked metabolites is limited (10.1073/pnas.2022857118; 10.3389/fnins.2019.00343). Greater characterization is required to identify biomarkers of environmental chemical exposures that contribute to neurodegenerative disorders. Chronic exposure to certain environmental chemicals can induce neurocognitive impairment (NCI). Analysis of circulating metabolites of patients and people presenting different degrees of cognition can enable identification of markers of chemical exposure associated with onset and progression of NCI.
Research objectives:
– To identify chemical exposure agents (i.e., markers of exposure) and endogenous metabolites (i.e., markers of effect) associated to NCI and/or cognitive assessment scores.
– To prioritize markers representing preventable neurotoxic chemical exposure.