Advertise With UsAdvertise on our extensive network of industry websites and newsletters.
Get the PBR newsletterSign up to our free email to get all the latest PBR
news.The US National Institute on Aging has awarded $9 million to the University of California, Irvine to support research into Alzheimer's disease and to help fund the development of pioneering treatments.
Subscribe to our email newsletter
The five-year Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center grant, which will support more than 30 University of California, Irvine (UCI) faculty investigators, renews an expiring $6 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
Over the next five years, the new NIA grant will support three key research projects. One project will seek to determine which age-related changes in the brain underlie the decline in episodic memory that accompanies aging.
The second project will test the hypothesis that defects in the mitochondria, the ‘energy factories’ of cells, play a major role in causing Alzheimer’s disease.
The third project will test how the removal of plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease impacts the progression of the disease, for example how plaque-removal prevents the development of tangles that also are associated with the disease.
“We are pleased that the NIA is supporting our efforts to understand and combat this insidious disease,” said Carl Cotman, principal investigator of the grant and director of the UCI Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia, which administers the ADRC. “The new funding will allow us to push ahead with our work on the mechanisms of brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease.”
Established in 2000, the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) program is committed to pioneering research initiatives that use the latest computer technology to collect, organize and analyze large amounts of biological data. This allows the ADRC to tie more closely together basic research into early cellular and molecular mechanisms of the disease with clinical applications.