Mining the Post-Mortem Human Brain for Neurodegenerative Markers: Deep Sequencing of Cell Type-Specific Transcriptomes
This webinar will highlight the use of high-throughput sequencing of post-mortem human brain tissue to identify neurodegenerative markers and identify potential drug targets.
Dr. Steve Sheardown, Head of Molecular Biology and Cell Engineering at pharmaceutical company Cerevance, will discuss a technology platform called NETSseq (Nuclear Enriched Transcript Sort sequencing). Cerevance uses NETSseq to interrogate the molecular diversity of individual neuronal cell types in human tissue to understand their genetic complexity, the contribution that each of these make to circuit function, and, in the context of brain disorders, their potential for therapeutic intervention.
Cerevance is building an extensive collection of transcriptomes from cell types selected for relevance to human disease covering both sexes and spanning different ages from donor samples obtained from diseased populations. Since commencing clinical data collection in October 2017, Cerevance have already accumulated over 1,300 high quality individual transcriptomes. Using this unique resource, the company aims to identify and pursue novel drug targets to address areas of high unmet medical need within the field of central nervous system disorders.
Dr. Sheardown will discuss how his team has transformed NETSseq from a low-throughput proof of concept to a robust high-throughput process for generating deep sequencing libraries from limited quantities of fixed post-mortem tissue. To achieve this, Cerevance has rigorously tested a range of products at every stage of the process, focusing on yield, quality, reproducibility, and automatability.
Drawing on examples from the company's transcriptome dataset, Dr. Sheardown will illustrate the depth of information that his team can generate using its NETSseq platform.