Development award
Stephen Todd of the Department of Geriatric Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, has been given the £228,000 Beeson Award to further his research into how Alzheimer’s disease progresses.
The Beeson Award, given by the American Foundation for Aging Research (AFAR) and the Atlantic Philanthropies, is made to advance research into geriatric medicine.
The grant will allow Todd to continue his research into the role of the enzyme beta-secretase, which exhibits higher levels of activity in patients with Alzheimer’s compared with older people without the disease. The enzyme is implicated in the formation of the plaques that accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
The grant will provide the means of retesting as many as possible of 400 previous volunteers five years after their initial test. “We hope to determine if the initial level of beta-secretase activity influenced how the disease progressed over that time, or for people who had no memory problems initially, if it predicts subsequent development of memory problems,” said Todd.
Beta-secretase is a key molecule in forming plaques, which are thought to be crucial in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
The funding will also enable the team to examine beta-secretase activity in people newly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s who are about to start drug treatment, to assess if the level of the enzyme can predict response to the drugs. About 150 people will be recruited for this part of the study.
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