NIH awards University of Kentucky $20.5 million for Alzheimer’s research
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Researchers at the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging have received a $20.5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to study astrocytes and their role in Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
“We are a highly collaborative crew at Sanders-Brown, so we work together all the time anyway. A project like this is natural for us,” Chris Norris, PhD, project leader and professor of pharmacology and nutritional sciences at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, said in a university press release. “We are a group of researchers that are all trying to beat Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.”
According to the release, the purpose of an NIH research program project grant is to fund large, multi-lab projects built around a common theme. The University of Kentucky project — which will unite about 35 researchers across six different labs — is named Strategies for Targeting Astrocyte Reactivity in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias, or STAR-ADRD. Norris said the acronym serves a double meaning, as astrocytes are star-shaped cells.
“Astrocytes are, in some ways, a forgotten cell in neurodegenerative diseases,” Norris said. “For many years they have been thought of as support cells for things like neurons. Neurons communicate extensively with one another to form memories that neuroscientists study. Neurons eventually die with the progression of Alzheimer’s and related dementias.”
According to the release, astrocytes help deliver energy, nutrients and oxygen from blood to neurons, as they have many branches that wrap around blood vessels in the brain.
“The reason we are so interested in astrocytes is because they show very obvious changes with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, where blood flow and communication between neurons is disrupted,” Norris said.
The STAR-ADRD venture comprises four individual projects, the release stated. They will be led by Donna M. Wilcock, PhD, professor of physiology and assistant dean for biomedicine, whose lab will study astrocyte connections that go around blood vessels; Peter Nelson, MD, PhD, professor and director of neuropathology, who will lead a project studying a potassium channel that acts as a metabolic sensor in astrocytes; and Olivier Thibault, PhD, professor of neuroscience and co-director of Sanders-Brown Intravital Imaging Facility, whose lab will look at how astrocytic insulin receptors help control metabolism, blood flow and calcium homeostasis. Norris will direct a project on astrocytes and the uptake of glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter.
“If we can figure out what reactive astrocytes are doing in terms of pathology, then we can perhaps develop treatments to target those pathways and hopefully alleviate pathology,” Norris said.