Alzheimer's Association Advisory Council Member Awarded $6.8 Million National Institutes of Health Grant

Alzheimer's Association
Monday, 12 May 2003

A research team headed by Linda J. Van Eldik, PhD, professor of cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, has received a $6.8 million Program Project Grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to explore brain cell changes involved in inflammation. Van Eldik is a member of the Alzheimer's Association's Medical and Scientific Advisory Council.

This five-year NIH-funded project will focus on molecular properties of glia, specialized brain cells that support, nourish, and protect neurons, the cells that make up the brain's information processing network. One important function of glia is their ability to produce an inflammatory response to infection or injury.

In Alzheimer's and other diseases involving progressive destruction of neurons, it is believed that inflammation can become a chronic, self-perpetuating process. Damaged and dying neurons release chemical signals that trigger an inflammatory response from glia, and that inflammation in turn contributes to further neuron injury.

The goal of this project is to show how glia interact with neurons once inflammation goes out of control. Van Eldik and her team believe that these interactions are likely to involve unique biochemical steps that could offer promising new therapeutic targets that would not affect other cells or processes. Breaking the destructive inflammatory cycle could prolong neuron survival, thereby delaying progression of Alzheimer's and related neurodegenerative diseases.

Other members of her team with close ties to the Alzheimer's Association are D. Martin Watterson, PhD, also of the Feinberg School of Medicine, who received a 2000 association award for a project related to this NIH grant, and Mary Jo LaDu, PhD, of the Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, who received an association grant in 2001 to support another area of her research.

The largest private funder of Alzheimer research, the Alzheimer's Association is committed to funding research into the causes, treatment and prevention of Alzheimer's disease. Through its national network of chapters, the association offers a broad range of programs and services for people with the disease, their families and caregivers and represents their interests on Alzheimer-related issues before federal, state and local government and with health and long-term care providers.

For more information, or to contact Alzheimer's Association, see their website at: www.alz.org