ANN ARBOR, MI - Alzheimer's disease research at the University of Michigan is getting a $10 million boost: a major grant that will fund a broad array of efforts aimed at finding and fighting the causes of the disease and other memory conditions.

Video

Watch related video clip. For faster downloading, choose the lo-res option. (Windows Media Player required)

Today, the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, will officially award a five-year grant to U-M's Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. For the last 16 years, MADRC has been the only federal Alzheimer's disease center in Michigan; it is currently one of only 33 nationwide.

The new money will continue to fund the center's Memory and Aging Project (UM-MAP), which is a long-term study on memory, aging and dementia. Vital information gathered from this study over the last 15 years has allowed researchers to gain new insights into Alzheimer's disease and related disorders.

The money will also fund studies that test new treatments and ideas on how to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. U-M researchers are currently seeking participants for studies of new medications, an experimental “Alzheimer's vaccine” approach and memory-protecting agents.

The grant will also support a special effort to encourage more participation in studies by African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans, so that research results better represent the entire American population. Older people who do not have memory loss or dementia are also needed for studies, to act as comparisons and to help researchers understand the aging brain better.

Several scientific research projects will also receive funding through the new grant, including advanced brain imaging studies that may lead to better ways of diagnosing Alzheimer's disease and predicting its progression. Laboratory research on a potential way to disable a key Alzheimer's protein will also receive funding.

“This grant will support five distinct cores, or groups of researchers, from around the University, as well as three very exciting projects,” says MADRC director Sid Gilman, M.D., F.R.C.P., the William Herdman Professor of neurology at the U-M Medical School. “The entire effort integrates with other U-M Alzheimer's disease activities, including comprehensive clinics for patients and our participation in national studies.”

About 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease — a number that's expected to rise to 10 million in the next 25 years. That prediction creates a critical need for more research on all forms of dementia, which include not only Alzheimer's disease but other conditions that impair memory, thinking ability and language.

“As the population gets older, the prevalence and cost of Alzheimer's disease will escalate, too,” says Gilman. “The total cost of the disease is estimated at $100 billion now, and that's conservative. Better treatment and prevention is urgently needed.”

Gilman notes that past funding from NIA for centers like MADRC has made it possible for scientists to get a better handle on what Alzheimer's disease is, how it differs from other dementia-causing disorders, and what happens in the brain as the disease progresses. Tremendous progress in understanding the disease has been made in the last 15 years, he notes, including the general consensus among experts that a protein called beta-amyloid builds up in the brain and helps bring about the death of brain cells that leads to the disease's tragic progressive symptoms.

But Alzheimer's disease still has no cure. Nor is there any surefire treatment to slow patients' long, slow decline, although a handful of medications has been approved for use and appear to help some patients. And patients and their families often don't receive a firm diagnosis of whether dementia is caused by Alzheimer's disease or another disorder that mimics it.

Meanwhile, although researchers know that advancing age and a family history of dementia raises an individual's risk of developing it themselves, not enough is known about specific genetic and lifestyle factors that might be involved. Researchers also want to learn more about how at-risk people can reduce their risk; early signs from population studies suggest that people who use cholesterol-lowering drugs and certain pain medications that reduce inflammation, and those who maintain a vigorous intellectual routine, may be at a lower risk.

The new MADRC funding, and funding for other centers around the country, Gilman says, should help bring all of these answers closer. “I see a time in the not-too-distant future when we will be able to treat this disease, and decrease the rate at which it progresses,” he says. “Perhaps we'll find ways to stop progression, and even treat the disorder before it gets started in people who are at high risk. That's the ultimate aim: to provide a safe treatment in advance of the start of dementia.”

To get there, he emphasizes, researchers need the help of people with and without memory loss willing to take part in research studies of all kinds. Individuals who want to find out more about U-M Alzheimer's research may visit MADRC's website at sitemaker.med.umich.edu/madrc or call the MADRC recruitment coordinator at (734) 615-8462 or clinical trials coordinator at (734) 647-7760.

The new NIA grant will allow U-M to add more participants to its database of older people with normal memory, mild to moderate memory loss, and suspected Alzheimer's disease. The UM-MAP has already enrolled more than 1,000 Michigan residents since it began in 1989, hundreds of whom are still alive and allow U-M researchers to follow their progress. Patients and families who agree to participate in research studies make an enormous contribution to future generations and the advancement of knowledge about Alzheimer's disease, Gilman says.

The new grant will help U-M increase its special efforts to involve members of ethnic and racial minorities in research studies. A major part of that effort is based in Ypsilanti , Mich. , where U-M researchers have established a clinical research office that reaches out to the African-American and Hispanic population in the area. The Minority Satellite Diagnostic and Treatment Center , as it is called, is directed by Lourdes Velez, M.D., of the U-M Department of Family Medicine.

Also funded by the new grant are the following cores:

• A “brain bank”, or neuropathology core, where scientists can study samples from the brains of U-M Alzheimer's disease study participants who have passed away. The information gained from brain tissue samples is crucial to understanding the disease and its risk factors. This core is headed by Andrew Lieberman, M.D., Ph.D., of the U-M Department of Pathology and Roger Albin, M.D., of the U-M Department of Neurology.
• Education for physicians, health care professionals and the public, including caregivers, to improve awareness of Alzheimer's and clinical research opportunities. A new effort will link U-M Alzheimer's education efforts with other NIA-funded ADCs, and the Alzheimer's Association. This core is headed by Cathleen Connell, Ph.D., of the U-M School of Public Health.
• Data analysis and biostatistical support for Alzheimer's disease researchers at U-M; this core is headed by Roderick Little, Ph.D., of the U-M School of Public Health.
• Administrative support for all of these functions; this area is headed by Gilman and Maria Ceo, administrator for the U-M Department of Neurology.

The three scientific projects that will be partially funded by the grant include two efforts to use position emission tomography (PET) imaging to diagnose and track the progress of suspected Alzheimer's disease. PET imaging, which can show activity in the brain using short-lived radioactive tracers, has shown great promise for helping determine which areas of the brain are affected in individual patients, and therefore which kind of dementia they might have.

In one PET project, 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 people normal brains and with 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' prognoses.

The second PET project, led by Roger Albin, M.D., will use a PET imaging agent, called 11C-DTBZ, that was developed at U-M. It allows researchers to make images of blood flow within the brain. The team 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 progressive dementia: Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies or frontotemporal dementia. If the researchers can successfully tell these disorders apart by 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., of the U-M Department of Neurology and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, will focus on laboratory studies of the regulation of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) breakdown 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) 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 targets for Alzheimer's disease, including a potential gene-therapy approach with X11.

Written by Kara Gavin

Recent Press Releases