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.

Lill CM, Bertram L , "Developing the ‘next generation’ of genetic association databases for complex diseases" , Hum. Mutat. , 33(9) , September 2012 , 1366–72
Lill CM, Liu T, Schjeide BM, Roehr JT, Akkad DA, Damotte V, Alcina A, Ortiz MA, Arroyo R, Lopez de Lapuente A, Blaschke P, Winkelmann A, Gerdes LA, Luessi F, Fernadez O, Izquierdo G, Antigüedad A, Hoffjan S, Cournu-Rebeix I, Gromöller S, Faber H, Liebsch M, Meissner E, Chanvillard C, Touze E, Pico F, Corcia P; ANZgene Consortium, Dörner T, Steinhagen-Thiessen E, Baeckman L, Heekeren HR, Li SC, Lindenberger U, Chan A, Hartung HP, Aktas O, Lohse P, Kümpfel T, Kubisch C, Epplen JT, Zettl UK, Fontaine B, Vandenbroeck K, Matesanz F, Urcelay E, Bertram L, Zipp F , "Closing the case of APOE in multiple sclerosis: no association with disease risk in over 29,000 subjects" , J Med Genet. , 49(9) , September 2012 , 558-62
Wallace BC, Small K, Brodley CE, Lau J, Schmid CH, Bertram L, Lill CM, Cohen JT, Trikalinos TA , "Toward modernizing the systematic review pipeline in genetics: efficient updating via data mining" , Genet Med. , 14(7) , July 2012 , 663-9
B.V. Hooli, PhD, G. Mohapatra, PhD, M. Mattheisen, MD, A.R. Parrado, PhD, J.T. Roehr, MS, Y. Shen, PhD, J.F. Gusella, PhD, R. Moir, PhD, A.J. Saunders, PhD, C. Lange, PhD, R.E. Tanzi, PhD and L. Bertram, MD , "Role of common and rare APP DNA sequence variants in Alzheimer disease" , Neurology 78 , 78/16 , April 17, 2012 , 1250-1257
Lill CM, Roehr JT, McQueen MB, Kavvoura FK, Bagade S, Schjeide BM, Schjeide LM, Meissner E, Zauft U, Allen NC, Liu T, Schilling M, Anderson KJ, Beecham G, Berg D, Biernacka JM, Brice A, DeStefano AL, Do CB, Eriksson N, Factor SA, Farrer MJ, Foroud T, Gasser T, Hamza T, Hardy JA, Heutink P, Hill-Burns EM, Klein C, Latourelle JC, Maraganore DM, Martin ER, Martinez M, Myers RH, Nalls MA, Pankratz N, Payami H, Satake W, Scott WK, Sharma M, Singleton AB, Stefansson K, Toda T, Tung JY, Vance J, Wood NW, Zabetian CP; 23andMe Genetic Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease Consortium; International Parkinson's Disease Genomics Consortium; Parkinson's Disease GWAS Consortium; Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2), Young P, Tanzi RE, Khoury MJ, Zipp F, Lehrach H, Ioannidis JP, Bertram L , "Comprehensive research synopsis and systematic meta-analyses in Parkinson’s disease genetics: The PDGene database" , PLoS Genet. , 8(3) , March 2012 , e1002548
Lill CM, Schjeide BM, Akkad DA, Blaschke P, Winkelmann A, Gerdes LA, Hoffjan S, Luessi F, Dörner T, Li SC, Steinhagen-Thiessen E, Lindenberger U, Chan A, Hartung HP, Aktas O, Lohse P, Kümpfel T, Kubisch C, Epplen JT, Zettl UK, Bertram L, Zipp F , "Independent replication of STAT3 association with multiple sclerosis risk in a large German case-control sample" , Neurogenetics , 13(1) , February 2012 , 83-6
Sungho Wona, Qing Luc, Lars Bertram, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Christoph Lange , "On the Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies: A Robust and Efficient Approach to Combine Population and Family-Based Studies" , Human Heredity , 73 , January 18, 2012 , 35-46
Lebedeva E, Stingl JC, Thal DR, Ghebremedhin E, Strauss J, Özer E, Bertram L, von Einem B, Tumani H, Otto M, Riepe MW, Högel J, Ludolph AC, von Arnim CA , "Genetic variants in PSEN2 and correlation to CSF β-amyloid42 levels in AD" , Neurobiol Aging , 33(1) , January 2012 , 201.e9-201.e18
Bertram L, Hampel H , "The role of genetics for biomarker development in neurodegeneration" , Prog Neurobiol. , 95(4) , December 2011 , 501-4
Lill CM, Bertram L , "Towards unveiling the genetics of neurodegenerative diseases" , Semin Neurol. , 31(5) , November 2011 , 531-41
more