bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.24.208975; this version posted July 24, 2020. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Finding drug targeting mechanisms with genetic evidence for Parkinson’s disease Catherine S. Storm1,*, Demis A. Kia1, Mona Almramhi1, Sara Bandres-Ciga2, Chris Finan3, Aroon D. Hingorani3,4,5, International Parkinson’s Disease Genomics Consortium (IPDGC), Nicholas W. Wood1,6,* 1 Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, University College London Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom 2 Molecular Genetics Section, Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, United States of America 3 Institute of Cardiovascular Science, Faculty of Population Health, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom 4 University College London British Heart Foundation Research Accelerator Centre, New Delhi, India 5 Health Data Research UK, 222 Euston Road, London, United Kingdom 6 Lead Contact * Correspondence:
[email protected] (CSS),
[email protected] (NWW) Summary Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that currently has no disease-modifying treatment, partly owing to inefficiencies in drug target identification and validation using human evidence. Here, we use Mendelian randomization to investigate more than 3000 genes that encode druggable proteins, seeking to predict their efficacy as drug targets for PD. We use expression and protein quantitative trait loci for druggable genes to mimic exposure to medications, and we examine the causal effect on PD risk (in two large case-control cohorts), PD age at onset and progression.