Arizona Biosciences News

Nov 03, 2003

AZ Alzheimer's collaboration nets $2.5M NIH grant

Tags: alzheimer's, arizona adc, banner, eric reiman, grants, nih, shri, tgen

Summary:

Alzheimer's researchers at TGen and the Arizona Alzheimer's Disease Consortium have received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the early causes of Alzheimer's disease. The collaboration is one of only three in the U.S. to be awarded funds for the project. The study will focus on the gene expression aspects of Alzheimer's.

Full Story:

Alzheimer's investigators at TGen and the Arizona Alzheimer's Disease Consortium have been awarded a $2.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will support research into the early causes of Alzheimer's disease and investigation into the impact of gene expression on treatment of the disease.

The project's principal investigator is Dr. Dietrich Stephan, director of neurogenomics at TGen, the Translational Genomics Research Institute. The co-principal investigators are Drs. Joe Rogers, president and senior scientist at the Sun Health Research Institute, and Eric Reiman, director of the Arizona ADC. Reiman is also clinical director of neurogenomics at TGen and research director at the PET Center at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center.

"With the national competition for grant dollars severe, this award not only emphasizes the importance of this research, but is the first of what I hope is a great deal of research funding coming to the state of Arizona due in part to these types of collaborations," Dr. Rogers said.

The Arizona ADC is a statewide research program involving eight of the state's leading biomedical research organizations. It is widely known for its brain donation program, and internationally recognized for its strengths in brain imaging and neuroscientific study of Alzheimer's.

Plans for the study include looking into which genes are turned on or off in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's; the role these genes play in contributing to the microscopic and brain imaging abnormalities found in these individuals; and new information on the genes that are most affected by normal aging.

The collaborative research effort is funded by the National Institute on Aging, and also involves Washington University in St. Louis, Duke University, University of Washington, and the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center.

For more information:

"Arizona group given Alzheimer's research grant," The Business Journal, 10/29/2003

TGen news release, 10/29/2003 

National Institute on Aging