Regional protein expression in human Alzheimer’s brain correlates with disease severity

Alzheimers disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that currently affects 36 million people worldwide with no effective treatment available. Development of AD follows a distinctive pattern in the brain and is poorly modelled in animals. Therefore, it is vital to widen both the spatial scope of the study of AD and prioritise the study of human brains. Here we show that functionally distinct human brain regions show varying and region-specific changes in protein expression. These changes provide novel insights into the progression of disease, novel AD-related pathways, the presence of a gradient of protein expression change from less to more affected regions, and the presence of a protective protein expression profile in the cerebellum. This spatial proteomics analysis provides a framework which can underpin current research and opens new avenues of interest to enhance our understanding of molecular pathophysiology of AD, provides new targets for intervention and broadens the conceptual frameworks for future AD research.