Multiple sclerosis atlas: a molecular map of brain lesion stages in progressive multiple sclerosis
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disorder of the central nervous system with an untreatable late progressive phase. Molecular maps of different stages of brain lesion evolution in patients with progressive multiple sclerosis (PMS) are missing but critical for understanding disease development and to identify novel targets to halt progression. Materials and Methods: The MS Atlas database comprises comprehensive high-quality transcriptomic profiles of 98 white matter (WM) brain samples of different lesion types (normal-appearing WM [NAWM], active, chronic active, inactive, remyelinating) from ten progressive MS patients and 25 WM areas from five non-neurological diseased cases. Results: We introduce the first MS brain lesion atlas (msatlas.dk), developed to address the current challenges of understanding mechanisms driving the fate on a lesion basis. The MS Atlas gives means for testing research hypotheses, validating biomarkers and drug targets. It comes with a user-friendly web interface, and it fosters bioinformatic methods for de novo network enrichment to extract mechanistic markers for specific lesion types and pathway-based lesion type comparison. We describe examples of how the MS Atlas can be used to extract systems medicine signatures and demonstrate the interface of MS Atlas. Conclusion: This compendium of mechanistic PMS WM lesion profiles is an invaluable resource to fuel future MS research and a new basis for treatment development.
Date Issued
2020-08-27
Date Acceptance
2020-07-13
Citation
Network and Systems Medicine, 2020, 3 (1), pp.122-129
ISSN
2690-5949
Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert
Start Page
122
End Page
129
Journal / Book Title
Network and Systems Medicine
Volume
3
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© Tobias Frisch et al., 2020; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32954379
PII: 10.1089/nsm.2020.0006
Subjects
MS atlas
VLA4
human brain lesions
lesion-specific heatmaps and networks
multiple sclerosis
natalizumab
transcriptome
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
United States
Date Publish Online
2020-08-27