Quantitative proteomic profiling of cerebrospinal fluid to identify candidate biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent form of dementia and the number of AD patients is expected to increase as human life expectancy improves. The deposition of β-amyloid protein (Aβ) in the extracellular matrix and neurofibrillary tangles intracellularly are pathologic hallmarks of AD in the brain. However, there are no reliable circulating biomarkers for accurate diagnosis of AD. In this study, we employed high-resolution mass spectrometry and tandem mass tags (TMT) to identify candidate biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease. A subset of the identified candidates was validated using multiplexed targeted PRM-LC-MS/MS analysis in an independent cohort.