Researching the cell – amyloid plaque relationship in Alzheimer’s disease

Bachelor Thesis (2025)
Author(s)

D.K. Smenovski (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Contributor(s)

Marcel J.T. Reinders – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

Roy Lardenoije – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

T. Verlaan – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

Gerard A. Bouland – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)

R. Marroquim – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Computer Graphics and Visualisation)

Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
More Info
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Publication Year
2025
Language
English
Graduation Date
27-06-2025
Awarding Institution
Delft University of Technology
Project
CSE3000 Research Project
Programme
Computer Science and Engineering
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
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Abstract

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) is a measuring technique of gene expressions in single cells that has allowed researchers to tackle Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in many ways. Single-cell data has been joined with machine learning to classify brain cells as affected by AD. However, not much is known regarding the usage of such classification models in a spatial setting. This paper analyzes how models trained on scRNAseq data can be used to find AD properties of single cells when measuring them with spatially resolved transcriptomics. With that we study the hypothesis that cells labeled as affected by the disease should appear closer to amyloid plaques, than those that are unaffected. To find out if this holds, three models are used to classify single cells spatially and their predictions are analyzed. Two single-cell datasets are used for training, each giving a drastically different classification outcome. The models do not come to a consensus on the hypothesis’ validity either, as the analysis finds no significant correlation between the variables.

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