Somatic cancer variants enriched in Alzheimer's disease microglia-like cells drive inflammatory and proliferative states.
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| Abstract | Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by microglia-mediated neuroinflammation. Deep (>1,000×) panel sequencing of 311 brain samples revealed enrichment of somatic single-nucleotide variants (sSNVs) in cancer driver genes in AD brains, especially in genes associated with clonal hematopoiesis (CH). These sSNVs were associated with clonal expansion and carried by both microglia-like brain macrophages (MLBMs) in multiple brain regions as well as paired blood, suggesting a likely hematopoietic origin. Single-nucleus RNA sequencing data from 62 additional AD and control brains revealed increased somatic copy number variants (sCNVs) associated with CH in AD MLBMs, whereas single-cell multi-omic analyses demonstrated that sSNV- and sCNV-carrying MLBMs exhibited inflammatory and proliferative transcriptional signatures characteristic of disease-associated microglia. These signatures were recapitulated in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived microglia-like cells with TET2, ASXL1, and DNMT3A variants. These findings suggest that clonal somatic driver variants in MLBMs are enriched in AD, potentially promoting neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. |
| Year of Publication | 2026
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| Journal | Cell
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| Date Published | 04/2026
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| ISSN | 1097-4172
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| DOI | 10.1016/j.cell.2026.03.040
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| PubMed ID | 42019491
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