Scientists Receive Grant to Study Cerebrovascular Changes During Healthy and Alzheimer's Aging

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIA) allocated a five-year, $2.8 million grant to researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) to explore cerebrovascular mechanisms in order to find a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, reports News-Medical . The investigators are studying aging-induced changes in the circulatory system in both normal brains and those with Alzheimer's, concentrating on astrocytes, whose support of the brain's circulatory system and neurons could be compromised by amyloid plaques. "As the amyloid impairs the astrocytes and their ability to regulate blood flow, the brain is starved of oxygen and energy, and therefore, neurons gradually die," said Virginia Tech Professor Harald Sontheimer. "In people we see conditions of memory loss and dementia." The researchers are using the NIA grant to probe a mouse model of a genetic form of Alzheimer's, and mice with a condition similar to what occurs in the presence of amyloid plaque. The team also will compare normal aging with aging with Alzheimer's-like conditions. "The hope is we'll discover something completely unsuspected — a protein or a signaling pathway that no one had thought about — that could then be potentially targeted to develop a glia-centered therapy for Alzheimer's disease," explained Sontheimer.