Welcome to the Cruchaga Lab

The Cruchaga Lab is dedicated to advancing the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer disease, other dementias, and stroke, by generating, analyzing and leveraging multi-tissue multi-omic data from large and well characterized cohorts.

Flow chart of the lab's processes for Alzheimer disease molecular phenotyping to better understand AD biology; identify new genes, drug targets, and biomarkers; and generate novel prediction models for AD.
We combine multi-tissue, multi-comic data, such as WGS, proteomics, epigenetic, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and lipidomics with multiple tissues (brain, plasma, csf, and iPSCs) from genetically defined Alzheimer disease cases (sporadic AD, mendelian AD, and risk variant carriers). We use deep molecular profiling analyze the data and to identify novel risk and protective variants, generate individual-level prediction models, and identify drug targets and drugs for repositioning.

The Cruchaga Lab is part of the Neurogenomics and Informatics (NGI) Center

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Large scale unbiased proteomics uncovers novel pathways and biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease

Large scale unbiased proteomics uncovers novel pathways and biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease

In order to fully understand the biology of Alzheimer’s disease, create new predictive models and identify novel causal and druggable targets large scale unbiased omic analyses are needed. For the last three years my lab has embarked on generated the largest and most detailed proteomic atlas in brain, CSF and plasma from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease […]

All Roads Lead to TREM2: Gearing Up to Target This Receptor

Cruchaga lab paired genomics and proteomics to research factors involved in TREM2 signaling and shedding. By compiling CSF samples from more than 3000 participants, they measured sTREM2 and ran a GWAS to find variants associated with protein levels. Their findings: 1) Carriers of the p.R47H AD risk variant tended to have less sTREM2 in their […]
COVID-19 patients’ blood plasma shows who is most likely to become severely ill

COVID-19 patients’ blood plasma shows who is most likely to become severely ill

By using a technique called high-throughput proteomics, Cruchaga Lab researchers have identified specific proteins that may help predict which patients may need to be placed on ventilators to breathe and which are most likely to die of the COVID-19 virus. Researchers learned that the presence of certain proteins may either cause severe illness or become […]

Cruchaga Lab at AD/PD 2023

The Alzheimer’s Disease/Parkinson’s disease (AD/PD) 2023 annual conference (https://adpd.kenes.com/) begins tomorrow and will continue through Saturday, April 1. The virtual conference provides 6 full days of scientific presentations and symposia including a mix of pre-recorded oral presentations and live discussions with presenters.The Cruchaga lab is represented by 13 of our own researchers who are presenting […]

Cruchaga awarded Zenith Fellowship Award

Carlos Cruchaga, PhD, has received a 2022 Zenith Fellow Award from the Alzheimer’s Association. The annual award is given to scientists who have made significant contributions to the field of Alzheimer’s disease research and are likely to make additional, substantial contributions in the future. Funding attached to the fellowships also helps support high-risk, high-reward projects in Alzheimer’s […]

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