Lars Bertram, MD

Headshot photo

Assistant Professor of Neurology, Assistant in Genetics
Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Lars Bertram is Assistant Professor of Neurology, Assistant in Genetics at the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School. At MGH, Dr. Bertram has spearheaded the analyses that led to the discovery of novel Alzheimer’s loci on chromosomes 9 & 10. His current research projects focus on searching and characterizing the putative Alzheimer’s genes underlying the loci identified in this and other studies. In collaboration with the Alzheimer Research Forum, Dr. Bertram developed and coordinated the “AlzGene database” project, a large-scale data mining effort in which his team has collected all of the nearly 1,000 published genetic association papers in the field. Using the same methodology, Dr. Bertram’s group this year launched two similar projects for genetic association studies of Parkinson’s disease (“PDGene”, funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation), and schizophrenia (“SczGene”, funded by NARSAD). Together, these databases will allow interested scientists to find in one place detailed information about any gene that shows significant risk effects across a multitude of different study populations.

Funded Research

Project Description Researchers Funding
Alz Research Forum for AlzGene Maintenance

Cure Alzheimer’s Fund is funding the upkeep and continued development of a revolutionary Web-based database. AlzGene is a fantastic resource for Alzheimer’s researchers, providing data and meta-analyses from hundreds of genetic association studies in an easy-to-use, searchable database. Scientists interested in a particular gene can search for it in AlzGene to see what previous studies have reported, receiving a wealth of information in a very short amount of time.

 Lars Bertram, MD 2006 - 2012
$389,172
Fine Mapping of Prioritized GWAS Results

In this application we propose to utilize next-generation sequencing combined with high-efficiency genomic sequence capture to systematically fine-map the 14q31 region which, based on the currently available data, very likely contains an important AD susceptibility locus(i). Newly identified variants will be followed up in more than 5,500 DNAs from both family-based and case-control backgrounds.

 Lars Bertram, MD 2008
$127,880

Selected Publications

These published papers resulted from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund support.

Haworth A, Bertram L, Carrera P, Elson JL, Braastad CD, Cox DW, Cruts M, den Dunnen JT, Farrer MJ, Fink JK, Hamed SA, Houlden H, Johnson DR, Nuytemans K, Palau F, Rayan DL, Robinson PN, Salas A, Schüle B, Sweeney MG, Woods MO, Amigo J, Cotton RG, Sobrido MJ , "Call for participation in the neurogenetics consortium within the Human Variome Project" , Neurogenetics , 12(3) , August 2011 , 169-73
Bertram, L , "Alzheimer’s genetics in the GWAS era: a continuing story of ‘replications and refutations’" , Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. , 11(3) , June 2011 , 246-53
Sarajärvi T, Tuusa JT, Haapasalo A, Lackman JJ, Sormunen R, Helisalmi S, Roehr JT, Parrado AR, Mäkinen P, Bertram L, Soininen H, Tanzi RE, Petäjä-Repo UE, Hiltunen M , "Cysteine 27 Variant of the δ-Opioid Receptor Affects Amyloid Precursor Protein Processing through Altered Endocytic Trafficking" , Mol Cell Biol. , 31(11) , June 2011 , 2326–2340
Thomas Pfeiffer, Lars Bertram, John P. A. Ioannidis , "Quantifying Selective Reporting and the Proteus Phenomenon for Multiple Datasets with Similar Bias " , Plos One , 6:3 , March 29, 2011
Brit-Maren M. Schjeide, BS; Cathrin Schnack, PhD; Jean-Charles Lambert, PhD; Christina M. Lill, MD; Julia Kirchheiner, MD, PhD; Hayrettin Tumani, MD; Markus Otto, MD; Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD; Hans Lehrach, PhD; Philippe Amouyel, PhD; Christine A. F. von Arnim, MD; Lars Bertram, MD , "The Role of Clusterin, Complement Receptor 1, and Phosphatidylinositol Binding Clathrin Assembly Protein in Alzheimer Disease Risk and Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarker Levels" , Arch Gen Psychiatry , 68(2) , February 7, 2011 , 207-213
Bertram L, Lill CM, Tanzi RE , "The Genetics of Alzheimer Disease: Back to the Future" , Neuron , 68(2) , Oct 21, 2010 , 270-81
Dolan SM, Hollegaard MV, Merialdi M, Betran AP, Allen T, Abelow C, Nace J, Lin BK, Khoury MJ, Ioannidis JP, Bagade S, Zheng X, Dubin RA, Bertram L, Velez Edwards DR, Menon R , "Synopsis of preterm birth genetic association studies: the preterm birth genetics knowledge base (PTBGene)" , Public Health Genomics , 13(7-8) , May 20, 2010 , 514-23
Sleegers K, Lambert J-C, Bertram L, Cruts M, Amouyel P, Broeckhoven CV , "The pursuit of susceptibility genes for Alzheimer's disease: progress and prospects" , Trends in Genetics , Volume 26, Issue 2 , February 2010 , 84-93
Castaldi PJ, Cho MH, Cohn M, Langerman F, Moran S, Tarragona N, Moukhachen H, Venugopal R, Hasimja D, Kao E, Wallace B, Hersh CP, Bagade S, Bertram L, Silverman EK, Trikalinos TA , "The COPD genetic association compendium: a comprehensive online database of COPD genetic associations" , Hum. Mol. Genet. , 10.1093/hmg/ddp519 , Feb 1, 2010
Giedraitis V, Glaser A, Sarajarvi T, Brundin R, Gunnarsson MD, Schjeide B-M, Tanzi RE, Helisalmi S, Pirttila T, Kilander L, Lannfelt L, Soininen H, Bertram L, Ingelsson M, Hiltunen M , "CALHM1 P86L polymorphism does not alter amyloid-β or tau in cerebrospinal fluid" , Neuroscience Letters , Volume 469, Issue 2 , Jan 22 2010 , 265-267
more