The Neurolipid Atlas: a lipidomics resource for neurodegenerative diseases

Summary

Lipid alterations in the brain have been implicated in many neurodegenerative diseases. To facilitate comparative lipidomic research across brain diseases, we establish a data common named the Neurolipid Atlas that we prepopulated with isogenic induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell)-derived lipidomics data for different brain diseases. Additionally, the resource contains lipidomics data of human and mouse brain tissue. Leveraging multiple datasets, we demonstrate that iPS cell-derived neurons, microglia and astrocytes exhibit distinct lipid profiles that recapitulate in vivo lipotypes. Notably, the Alzheimer disease (AD) risk gene ApoE4 drives cholesterol ester (CE) accumulation specifically in human astrocytes and we also observe CE accumulation in whole-brain lipidomics from persons with AD. Multiomics interrogation of iPS cell-derived astrocytes revealed that altered cholesterol metabolism has a major role in astrocyte immune pathways such as the immunoproteasome and major histocompatibility complex class I antigen presentation. Our data commons, available online ( https://neurolipidatlas.com/ ), allows for data deposition by the community and provides a user-friendly tool and knowledge base for a better understanding of lipid dyshomeostasis in neurodegenerative diseases. © 2025. The Author(s).

Authors Feringa FM, Koppes-den Hertog SJ, Wang LY, Derks RJE, Kruijff I, Erlebach L, Heijneman J, Miramontes R, Pömpner N, Blomberg N, Olivier-Jimenez D, Johansen LE, Cammack AJ, Giblin A, Toomey CE, Rose IVL, Yuan H, Ward ME, Isaacs AM, Kampmann M, Kronenberg-Versteeg D, Lashley T, Thompson LM, Ori A, Mohammed Y, Giera M, van der Kant R
Journal Nature metabolism
Publication Date 2025 Oct;7(10):2142-2164
PubMed 40983680
PubMed Central PMC12552125
DOI 10.1038/s42255-025-01365-z

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