Cure Alzheimer's Fund: Targeting Breakthrough Research

Despite advances in understanding the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, advancements in its diagnosis and treatment are limited. To address this key need, researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the University of Houston(UH) have been awarded a $150,000 grant from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund to pursue innovative work. Support for this innovative project is being provided through Cure Alzheimer’s Fund by a consortium of philanthropic funders in the Houston area, led by a good friend of Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, Steve Cook of Fieldstone Partners in Houston.

National Alzheimer’s Disease Research Strategy Prepared by:   Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D.

This project will further explore evidence that the Abeta peptide, acknowledged to be implicated in the cause of AD, may be an anti-microbial agent. More relevant articles: Glabe Paper Helps Confirm Prana Drug Strategy Amyloid beta protein may be a defense against Microbes! Drs.

Investigating the increasingly documented link between TBI/stroke and Alzheimer’s disease is aimed at not only developing effective interruptions of that linkage but also a contribution to an understanding of the basic Alzheimer’s disease mechanism. Related articles: Alzheimer’s and Traumatic Brain Injury? Dr.

Cure Alzheimer's Fund is part of a funding consortium supporting collaborative biomarker investigation of the elevation of Tau and decreased concentrations of Amyloid beta 42 in the Central Spinal Fluid as evidence of the presence of the Alzheimer's disease pathology.   Leslie M ShawJohn Q.

In collaboration with Dr. Tanzi and other members of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Research Consortium Collaborative, Dr. Greengard will characterize the effects of specific Abeta oligomers on synaptic function in neuronal cells and brain slices.

In collaboration with an anonymous funder, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund is supporting development of a facility to measure the concentration of Amyloid-beta in real time in the brain of living, behaving mouse models that develop features of AD. The model enables screening for drugs that lower Amyloid-beta directly in the brain in relatively high throughput.   Dr.

A collaboration of members of the Research Consortium, a member of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Science Advisory Board, and non-Cure Alzheimer’s Fund affiliated researchers hypothesize that an abnormal increase in levels of synaptic Abeta and particularly, Abeta oligomers may lead to synaptic dysfunction, cognitive decline, and eventually dementia. This highly innovative collaborative project will address how Abeta oligomers are formed and which types detrimentally impact synaptic dysfunction and neuronal survival in the brain. As a result of promising results from the first year of work, the original members of the collaborative were re-funded for a second year in August, 2007.

This study is characterizing the ability of a novel AD candidate gene for the ability to regulate the enzyme, beta-secretase involved in Abeta production. Dr.

Test the hypothesis that microRNA’s regulate protein levels of APP and Genome Wide Association Screen (GWAS)-identified levels of APP and GWAS-identified risk genes. Dr.

Understanding the hypothesized relationship between ADAM10, a newly identified Alzheimer’s-related gene and dimebolin, the key ingredient in the anti-Alzheimer’s drug Dimebon.   Dr.

Genotyping, analysis, follow-up, and confirmatory studies to identify more than 95% of all remaining AD genes, thereby providing many more targets for the development of effective therapeutic intervention. Major milestone achieved with the aforementioned identification of 70 new genes related to risk for AD from a Genome Wide Association Screen (GWAS) and from meta-analysis of AlzGene data. Four of these were published by Tanzi and colleagues in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Project/Description Researcher(s) Funding Alzheimer’s Genome Project™ InitiativeOur core research project; the Alzheimer's Genome Project has the objective of identifying all relevant remaining Alzheimer’s genes, thereby identifying more targets for the development of therapeutic interventions. A milestone for this project was achieved in 2008 with the identification of 70 new genes that confer risk for or protection against Alzheimer’s. This effort represents some of the most important Alzheimer’s breakthroughs in recent history, as the genes will greatly facilitate the development of effective therapies for the disease.

Researcher: Bradley T. Hyman, M.D.

The Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Center has collected approximately 800 brain samples, providing an extraordinary resource for clinical-pathological correlations for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.This research project involves comparing quantitative phenotypes to genetic markers. In earlier studies, these brain samples were used to study the consequences of inheritance of apolipoprotein E-ε4, and of the ubiquilin 1 risk alleles (described by Dr.

Associate Professor of PsychiatryHarvard Medical SchoolMassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease Dr. Blacker is a geriatric psychiatrist with a doctoral degree in genetic epidemiology, and serves as Director of the Gerontology Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her primary work concerns the clinical and genetic epidemiology of Alzheimer's disease.

This study draws on a unique community-based longitudinal cohort of 378 subjects who span the range of impairment between normal aging and mild Alzheimer's disease(AD). This research focuses on two key steps to find AD genes and to understand their impact.

Neurobiology of Disease LaboratoryGenetics and Aging Research UnitMassachusetts General Hospital Dr. Kovacs has over fifteen years of molecular and cell biology research experience. She joined the Genetics and Aging Research Unit in 1993 as a postdoctoral fellow, to study the role of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) in Alzheimer's disease.

Assistant Professor of Neurology, Assistant in GeneticsHarvard Medical School/Massachusetts General HospitalDr. Lars Bertram is Assistant Professor of Neurology, Assistant in Genetics at the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School. At MGH, Dr.

Cure Alzheimer’s is funding the management and continued development of a revolutionary web-based database.