Grants Help Make Florida Top in Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Care
The State of Florida’s premier Alzheimer’s disease grant program awarded members of Florida Atlantic University’s Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute three grants totaling $1 million for their novel approaches to care and treatment of the disease.
The funding will support two projects investigating the role of relatively unexplored facets of brain chemistry in Alzheimer’s onset and progression. The third award will fund the development of a simple screening test to help inform an individual with memory concerns whether they can safely drive a car.
A full 20% of Florida’s population is made up of adults aged 65 and older, the age range at the greatest risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The state is second only to California in the number of adults aged 60 and older. By 2045, the number of adults 60 and older is expected to grow to 30% of the state’s population. As this population grows, so too will the number of Floridians diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The Ed and Ethel Moore Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program, created by the Florida Legislature in 2014 to address the growing impact of the disease in the state, has awarded three $350,000 grants to Florida Atlantic researchers.
ADVANCES IN BRAIN CHEMISTRY
Among the priority research areas for the grant program is the elucidation of the basic science related to Alzheimer’s disease. Much of that research has historically focused on proteins and genes, but new evidence suggests that brain lipids such as cholesterol play an important role in neurodegeneration, according to Qi Zhang, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science and the Advanced Cell Imaging Core scientific director for the Brain Institute.
Zhang’s research team was awarded a $350,000 Moore Grant to test the hypothesis that Alzheimer’s risk factors come together to disrupt brain cholesterol processes, triggering synaptic dysfunction. Their methods will include new imaging tools for brain cholesterol. The project could lead to new insight into brain cholesterol and potentially new therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease.
Another brain chemistry project funded by the grant program could provide a new avenue to explore the mounting evidence that neuroinflammation plays a key role in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
Mare Cudic, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, previously studied the role of glycosylation in cancer progression and metastasis. Recent research has shown that the same type of glycosylation she studies in cancer is also present in the amyloid beta protein. In Alzheimer’s disease, this protein is cleaved by enzymes to produce smaller peptides that build up the amyloid plaques in the brain.
“That caught my attention. In particular, we were intrigued by the presence of the glycans in the proximity to the sites cleaved by enzymes and wonder if this may affect the buildup of the amyloid plaques in the brain,” said Cudic, who will lead the project. “We were very interested to look into how glycosylation affects inflammation in the brain, and we already have some promising preliminary results.”
DRIVE SAFE
Another research priority for the Ed and Ethel Moore Program is a focus on the social and behavioral aspects of caring for people with Alzheimer’s Disease. One of the first major challenges for Alzheimer’s caregivers is the question of whether a person in the early stages of dementia can still safely drive a car.
Ruth Tappen, Ed.D., RN, FAAN, professor and Christine E. Lynn Eminent Scholar at Atlantic’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, previously developed Fit2Drive, an online screening test that can help predict an older driver’s ability to pass an on-road driving exam.
That research narrowed down a field of cognitive assessments to two well-known and relatively brief tests that, along with an algorithm developed by Tappen and her colleagues, could predict an aging driver’s road test results with over 90% accuracy.
Fit2Drive is web browser-based and requires the user to input the results of the two tests that, while short, still need to be administered by a trained technician. With support from an Ed and Ethel Moore Program grant, the Fit2Drive team will now begin development of a tablet app version of the tool that users can complete on their own in a primary care office setting.
“That’s what this is all about: What can we do accurately on a tablet without a psychometrician administering these tests,” Tappen said.