NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The UK’s Wellcome Trust said this week that it has awarded £1.3 million ($2.7 million) to support a large genome-wide association study with the goal of understanding the genetic basis of late-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Cardiff University will lead the project, which will analyze DNA samples from 14,000 people -- 6,000 with late-onset Alzheimer's disease and 8,000 controls from the UK and US.
The researchers hope to identify common genetic variations that either increase the risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s or protect patients from developing the disease.
Julie Williams, a professor of neuropsychological genetics at Cardiff University and the principal investigator on the project, said in a statement that it is the “largest genetic study ever to look at Alzheimer's.”
Panos Deloukas’ group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute will perform the genotyping for the study with Illumina’s HumanHap550 Genotyping BeadChips.