Core Projects

The MADRC supports three scientific projects currently underway. Two of the projects involve using positron emission topography or PET imaging to track and diagnose the progression of suspected Alzheimer’s disease. The other project involves laboratory research on a potential way to disable a key Alzheimer’s protein.

In one of the PET projects, led by Kirk Frey, M.D., researchers will scan the brains of people with mild dementia and mild cognitive impairment twice, two years apart, and ask them to complete questionnaires that measure brain function. The researchers will compare their results over time with previous PET scans of healthy people with those who have known Alzheimer’s disease and look for ways to track Alzheimer’s progression. This study may lead to the use of PET scans to predict individual patients’ prognosis.

The other PET imaging project, led by Roger Albin, M.D., will use a PET imaging agent developed at the U-M. It allows researchers to see blood flow within the brain. The researchers will scan the brains of people with early mild dementia and try to determine if their symptoms are being caused by one of three common causes of dementia: Alzheimer’s disease, Dementia with Lewy bodies or Frontotemporal dementia. If researchers can successfully tell these disorders apart using PET scan information correlated with other measures, they may be better able to target specific therapies for individual patients.

The third scientific project led by Scott Turner, M.D., Ph.D., will focus on the regulation and breakdown of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) to Abeta/amyloid - - the neurotoxic product that accumulates in the aging brain and is thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease. Turner and his colleagues discovered that a protein called X11/mint regulates the processing of APP to Abeta/amyloid in cells in culture dishes. They are now studying transgenic mice that express the human proteins (APP and X11/mint) to see if this effect occurs in the brain of living mice, and to study the mechanisms involved. This research may help lead to new therapeutic treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, including a potential gene-therapy approach with X11/mint.