The Center for Cancer Systems Pharmacology

Research

Neurodegenerative Diseases

LSP investigators are developing new approaches for detecting and treating neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease. 

 

As populations age, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease and ALS pose an overwhelming burden for healthcare systems and tragedies for the individuals and families involved. Unfortunately, it remains challenging to discover effective drugs for neurodegenerative diseases because their causes are complicated and poorly understood. In part, this is because neurodegenerative diseases often develop gradually over years before the disease becomes symptomatic, so the disease is advanced at the time symptomatic patients present to healthcare providers.

LSP researchers are collaborating with clinicians at Mass General Brigham to improve how we understand, detect, and treat neurodegenerative diseases. Led by Dr. Mark Albers, these efforts evaluate potential therapeutic targets in various preclinical models (cultured human cells, iPSCs, mouse models, and human tissues), using mechanistically-informed biomarkers for early detection, drug response prediction, and monitoring efficacy in clinical trials. Additional projects leverage machine learning algorithms (DRIAD: Drug Repurposing In Alzheimer's Disease; TRIALS (Therapeutic Repurposing in ALS) to explore opportunities for repurposing FDA-approved drugs for new indications. Our long-term goal is to better understand disease mechanisms and guide the development of molecules with companion biomarkers tailored to specific types of Alzheimer's Disease and other age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

Related News

March 25, 2025
Albers Lab at MGH develops new at-home test for brain health

Featured Publications

Causal inference in medical records and complementary systems pharmacology for metformin drug repurposing towards dementia

Charpignon et al.
Nature Communications. 2022 Dec 10. PMCID: PMC9741618
Journal
PubMed

Machine learning identifies candidates for drug repurposing in Alzheimer’s disease.

Rodriguez et al.
Nature Communications. 2021 Feb 15. PMCID: PMC7884393.
PubMed
Journal

Related Publications

Mukhija, S., Sunog, M., Magdamo, C., & Albers, M. W. (2025). Impact of Severe COVID-19 on Accelerating Dementia Onset: Clinical and Epidemiological Insights. medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.26.25324688
Jobin, B., Magdamo, C., Delphus, D., Runde, A., Reineke, S., Soto, A. A., Ergun, B., Mukhija, S., Albers, A. D., & Albers, M. W. (2025). The AROMHA brain health test is a remote olfactory assessment to screen for cognitive impairment. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 9290. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-92826-8
König, L. E., Rodriguez, S., Hug, C., Daneshvari, S., Chung, A., Bradshaw, G. A., Sahin, A., Zhou, G., Eisert, R. J., Piccioni, F., Das, S., Kalocsay, M., Sokolov, A., Sorger, P., Root, D. E., & Albers, M. W. (2024). TYK2 as a novel therapeutic target in Alzheimer’s Disease with TDP-43 inclusions [Preprint]. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.06.04.595773
Verma, A. K., Lowery, S., Lin, L.-C., Duraisami, E., Abrahante Lloréns, J. E., Qiu, Q., Hefti, M., Yu, C. R., Albers, M. W., & Perlman, S. (2024). Persistent Neurological Deficits in Mouse PASC Reveal Antiviral Drug Limitations [Preprint]. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.06.02.596989
Marques, C., Held, A., Dorfman, K., Sung, J., Song, C., Kavuturu, A. S., Aguilar, C., Russo, T., Oakley, D. H., Albers, M. W., Hyman, B. T., Petrucelli, L., Lagier-Tourenne, C., & Wainger, B. J. (2024). Neuronal STING activation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. Acta Neuropathologica, 147(1), 56. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-024-02688-z
Nariya, M. K., Mills, C. E., Sorger, P. K., & Sokolov, A. (2023). Paired evaluation of machine-learning models characterizes effects of confounders and outliers. Patterns (New York, N.Y.), 4(8), 100791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2023.100791
Charpignon, M.-L., Vakulenko-Lagun, B., Zheng, B., Magdamo, C., Su, B., Evans, K., Rodriguez, S., Sokolov, A., Boswell, S., Sheu, Y.-H., Somai, M., Middleton, L., Hyman, B. T., Betensky, R. A., Finkelstein, S. N., Welsch, R. E., Tzoulaki, I., Blacker, D., Das, S., & Albers, M. W. (2022). Causal inference in medical records and complementary systems pharmacology for metformin drug repurposing towards dementia. Nature Communications, 13(1), 7652. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35157-w
Rodriguez, S., Sahin, A., Schrank, B. R., Al-Lawati, H., Costantino, I., Benz, E., Fard, D., Albers, A. D., Cao, L., Gomez, A. C., Evans, K., Ratti, E., Cudkowicz, M., Frosch, M. P., Talkowski, M., Sorger, P. K., Hyman, B. T., & Albers, M. W. (2021). Genome-encoded cytoplasmic double-stranded RNAs, found in C9ORF72 ALS-FTD brain, propagate neuronal loss. Science Translational Medicine, 13(601), eaaz4699. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.aaz4699
Rodriguez, S., Hug, C., Todorov, P., Moret, N., Boswell, S. A., Evans, K., Zhou, G., Johnson, N. T., Hyman, B. T., Sorger, P. K., Albers, M. W., & Sokolov, A. (2021). Machine learning identifies candidates for drug repurposing in Alzheimer’s disease. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1033. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21330-0
Song, Y., Subramanian, K., Berberich, M. J., Rodriguez, S., Latorre, I. J., Luria, C. M., Everley, R., Albers, M. W., Mitchison, T. J., & Sorger, P. K. (2019). A dynamic view of the proteomic landscape during differentiation of ReNcell VM cells, an immortalized human neural progenitor line. Scientific Data, 6, 190016. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2019.16

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