Multi Layered Omics Approaches Reveal Glia Specific Alterations in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review and Future Prospects.

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative dementia with multi-layered complexity in its molecularetiology. Multiple omics-based approaches, such as genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics,and lipidomics are enabling researchers to dissect this molecular complexity, and to uncover a plethora of alterations yielding insights into the pathophysiology of this disease. These approaches reveal multi-omics alterations essentially in allcell types of the brain, including glia. In this systematic review, we screen the literature for human studies implementingany omics approach within the last 10 years, to discover AD-associated molecular perturbations in brain glial cells. The findings fromover 200 AD-related studies are reviewed under four different glial cell categories: microglia, oligodendrocytes, astrocytes and brain vascular cells. Under each category, we summarize the shared and unique molecular alterations identified in glial cells through complementary omics approaches. We discuss the implications of these findings for the development, progression and ultimately treatment of this complex disease as well as directions for future omics studies inglia cells.