SEATTLE -- Parse Biosciences announced their commitment to support researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in generating one of the largest single cell datasets focused on understanding alternative splicing events in the cells of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients. The study’s initial phase will analyze transcriptomic profiles from more than 10 million cells derived from more than 1,000 peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples of patients with neurodegenerative conditions. The data amassed from these analyses will lay the foundation for discoveries that could transform how these diseases are understood, detected, and treated.

“Historical research in neurodegenerative disease has focused on the genomic underpinnings for disease diagnoses, but few have looked at the post transcriptional events that may be further driving pathology and progression of disease,” said Towfique Raj, PhD, principal investigator in the laboratory for functional genomics and core faculty member of the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Mount Sinai, who will lead this study. “We’re excited to be able to look at alternative splicing events in single cells at scale to determine alternative contributors to disease onset, progression and severity. Studies of this scale are critical to the development of foundational models to help us better understand neurodegenerative disease.”

Dr. Raj’s research team at Mount Sinai is dedicated to understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

For this study, the Mount Sinai team is working to conduct high-throughput profiling on banked PBMCs donated by patients with confirmed Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease diagnoses. The researchers expect to profile more than 1,000 samples in order to capture single cell whole transcriptome repertoire data on them. The samples that have been prepared at Mount Sinai will then be sent to Parse GigaLab, a state-of-the-art facility purpose-built for the generation of massive-scale single cell RNA sequencing datasets. Leveraging Parse’s Evercode chemistry, the GigaLab can rapidly produce large single cell datasets with exceptional quality.

“We are incredibly excited to bring the power of GigaLab to elevate the impactful work the Raj Lab has been driving,” says Dr. Charlie Roco, Chief Technology Officer at Parse Biosciences. “The speed and scale achieved with the GigaLab truly helps to accelerate research and get us to insights faster than we ever have before.”