Adam Christian Naj
· Associate Professor of Epidemiology in Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Hospital of the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania · Rehabilitation Medicine
Active 2007–2026
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About
Adam Christian Naj, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics, and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His research primarily focuses on the genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and neurodegeneration. He has contributed to genome-wide association analyses in the Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC), resulting in a highly cited first-author paper in 2011. Since joining Penn in 2012, Dr. Naj has extended his roles in analysis and data management within the ADGC and has been actively involved in co-leading quality control and case-control analysis working groups in the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), which has collected data on nearly 600 whole genomes and over 10,500 whole exomes of AD cases and controls to identify rare genomic variants associated with AD risk. His recent work includes guiding the development of quality control pipelines for next-generation sequencing data as part of the Genomic Center on Alzheimer’s Disease (GCAD). Dr. Naj is also a co-founder and organizer of the annual Symposium on Advances in Genetic Epidemiology and Statistics (SAGES), promoting methodological development for genomic data analysis. His research portfolio has expanded to include studies on genetic loci contributing to multiple neurodegenerative diseases and phenotypes, including Parkinson’s disease and progressive…
Research topics
- Biology
- Genetics
- Medicine
- Internal medicine
- Bioinformatics
- Gerontology
- Computer Science
- Machine Learning
- Neuroscience
- Pathology
Selected publications
New insights into the genetic etiology of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias
Nature Genetics · 2022 · 2403 citations
Characterization of the genetic landscape of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADD) provides a unique opportunity for a better understanding of the associated pathophysiological processes. We performed a two-stage genome-wide association study totaling 111,326 clinically diagnosed/'proxy' AD cases and 677,663 controls. We found 75 risk loci, of which 42 were new at the time of analysis. Pathway enrichment analyses confirmed the involvement of amyloid/tau pathways and highlighted mi…
Nature Communications · 2020 · 484 citations
Each additional copy of the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) allele is associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's dementia, while the APOE2 allele is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's dementia, it is not yet known whether APOE2 homozygotes have a particularly low risk. We generated Alzheimer's dementia odds ratios and other findings in more than 5,000 clinically characterized and neuropathologically characterized Alzheimer's dementia cases and controls. APOE2/2 was associated with a low Alz…
Common variants in Alzheimer’s disease and risk stratification by polygenic risk scores
Nature Communications · 2021 · 332 citations
Genetic discoveries of Alzheimer's disease are the drivers of our understanding, and together with polygenetic risk stratification can contribute towards planning of feasible and efficient preventive and curative clinical trials. We first perform a large genetic association study by merging all available case-control datasets and by-proxy study results (discovery n = 409,435 and validation size n = 58,190). Here, we add six variants associated with Alzheimer's disease risk (near APP, CHRNE, PRKD…
JAMA Neurology · 2020 · 271 citations
Importance: Compared with non-Hispanic White individuals, African American individuals from the same community are approximately twice as likely to develop Alzheimer disease. Despite this disparity, the largest Alzheimer disease genome-wide association studies to date have been conducted in non-Hispanic White individuals. In the largest association analyses of Alzheimer disease in African American individuals, ABCA7, TREM2, and an intergenic locus at 5q35 were previously implicated. Objective: T…
Scientific Reports · 2022 · 27 citations
Genetics play an important role in late-onset Alzheimer's Disease (AD) etiology and dozens of genetic variants have been implicated in AD risk through large-scale GWAS meta-analyses. However, the precise mechanistic effects of most of these variants have yet to be determined. Deeply phenotyped cohort data can reveal physiological changes associated with genetic risk for AD across an age spectrum that may provide clues to the biology of the disease. We utilized over 2000 high-quality quantitative…
Recent grants
Pleiotropy GWAS of Alzheimer's Disease
NIH · $2.1M · 2016–2022
Core C- Biostatistics and Data Analysis Core
NIH · $23.7M · 2016–2027
Frequent coauthors
- 716 shared
Margaret A. Pericak‐Vance
Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation
- 708 shared
Eden R. Martin
University of Miami
- 668 shared
Jonathan L. Haines
Case Western Reserve University
- 666 shared
Brian W. Kunkle
University of Miami
- 666 shared
Lindsay A. Farrer
Framingham Heart Study
- 646 shared
Gary W. Beecham
University of Miami
- 638 shared
Richard Mayeux
Columbia University
- 582 shared
Badri N. Vardarajan
Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Education
- 2000
B.A., Biology (Genetics)/Psychology
University of Chicago
- 2008
Ph.D., Epidemiology (Human Genetics)
The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
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