CHCHD10 Mitigates Alzheimer's Disease‐Related Phenotypes in Association With Epigenetic Remodeling in Directly Reprogrammed Neurons

ABSTRACT

Mitochondrial dysfunction and chromatin dysregulation are interconnected contributors to neuronal vulnerability in Alzheimer's disease (AD), yet the molecular mechanisms linking these processes remain poorly understood. CHCHD10, a mitochondrial intermembrane space protein, has been implicated in neurodegenerative disorders, but its role in AD has not been defined. Here, we identify CHCHD10 as a previously unrecognized modulator of neuronal epigenomic stability in AD. Using direct fibroblast‐to‐neuron reprogramming, which preserves patient‐specific epigenetic signatures, we show that AD neurons recapitulate genome‐wide hypomethylation patterns observed in postmortem AD cortex. CHCHD10 expression is significantly reduced in AD neurons and across multiple human brain datasets, including single‐cell and bulk RNA sequencing, proteomics, and human cortical tissue analyses. Restoration of CHCHD10 in AD neurons reduces amyloid‐β and insoluble tau accumulation while reversing AD‐associated differentially methylated regions across CpG islands, promoters, and regulatory elements. CHCHD10‐responsive methylation changes overlap with those observed in human AD brain regions and colocalize with significant AD loci and cortex‐specific eQTL loci, including MAPT and ABCA7. Finally, we identify KATNAL2 as a CHCHD10‐responsive effector whose loss enhances tau phosphorylation and seeding, whereas its restoration mitigates tau pathology. Together, these findings support a CHCHD10‐associated neuroprotective pathway linking mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenomic instability, and tau pathology in AD.