Genetic dependency of Alzheimer’s disease-associated genes across cells and tissue types

Effective treatments targeting disease etiology are urgently needed for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Although candidate AD genes have been identified and altering their levels may serve as therapeutic strategies, the consequence of such alterations remain largely unknown. Herein, we analyzed CRISPR knockout/RNAi knockdown screen data for over 700 cell lines and evaluated cellular dependencies of 104 AD-associated genes previously identified by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and gene expression network studies. Multiple genes showed widespread cell dependencies across tissue lineages, suggesting their inhibition may yield off-target effects. Meanwhile, several genes including SPI1, MEF2C, GAB2, ABCC11, ATCG1 were identified as genes of interest since their genetic knockouts specifically affected high-expressing cells whose tissue lineages are relevant to cell types found in AD. Overall, analyses of genetic screen data identified AD-associated genes whose knockout or knockdown selectively affected cell lines of relevant tissue lineages, prioritizing targets for potential AD treatments.