A five-year, $10 million federal grant renewal will allow the state's medical school researchers to advance their two-decade study of Alzheimer's disease, which afflicts millions of Americans and is one of the nation's leading killers.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in announcing the National Institutes of Health award Wednesday, said its research team has found indications that diabetes and obesity may contribute to the onset of the irreversible disease, which destroys memory and thinking skills.
Now, the team will be able to test drugs on its findings to see if the medications can lessen the effect of obesity and diabetes on Alzheimer's, said Sue Griffin, director of research at the medical school's institute on aging and a nationally renowned Alzheimer's researcher whose discovery nearly 30 years ago underpins the ongoing studies.
"Hopefully this will hasten the creation of clinical trials so we can actually try these drugs" on patients, said Griffin, who has led the medical school's Alzheimer research since its inception in 1995.
Griffin said the medical school's research is particularly relevant in Arkansas, which ranks near the top in its share of population that is either obese or has diabetes.
An estimated 54,000 Arkansans ages 65 or older are living with Alzheimer's this year, a number projected to rise to 67,000 by 2025, according to the national Alzheimer's Association. More than 900 Arkansans died from the disease in 2013, according to the association.
There is no cure, and effective treatment and prevention methods have not been developed, Griffin said.
"This is a disease, almost the only one of real big proportions, that we have nothing for it," Griffin said.
Susan Neyman, executive director of the Alzheimer's Association Arkansas Chapter, praised Griffin as "internationally renowned" and cited Griffin's decades of research. Neyman said the new funding ensures that Griffin's work won't be prematurely stopped because of lack of money.
"It's going to allow her to continue her research to the point that there are some disease-modifying breakthroughs," Neyman said. "That's the goal ... to come up with definitive causes, treatment and ultimately a cure."
Cumulatively, the National Institutes of Health has dedicated $910 million to research Alzheimer's, after a $300 million congressional allocation, Neyman said. The Alzheimer's Association is advocating for an additional $400 million next year from Congress, and wants to see the cumulative total at $2 billion, Neyman said.
As many as 5 million Americans in 2013 lived with the disease and nearly 85,000 people died from it, making Alzheimer's the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Alzheimer's is most common in people 60 or older, according to the CDC. Mild memory loss is one of the disease's first manifestations. Sufferers also have problems handling money, display poor judgment and misplace items in odd places, according to the federal agency.
Griffin's first discovery related to the disease was that the brain has an immune system that functions like the body's. A Nobel Prize winner persuaded her in 1989 to publish that research, which ran counter to popular belief at the time.
Griffin said the finding's importance is that it showed that when the brain's immune system responds to a stressor, it produces a plaque near nerve cells that affect thinking. This is unlike the body's immune system, which treats problems head-on.
"The brain has this other strategy dealing with stuff -- like people [do]: 'Just wall it off and don't think about it,'" said Griffin, who this summer was awarded the Alzheimer's Association Lifetime Achievement Award. "If the problem is chronic, it will lead to the vicious circle."
Peter Crooks, chairman of UAMS' department of pharmaceutical sciences, will lead the research's drug component, Griffin said. Crooks has established a "library" of drugs that he has developed and is an "excellent picker" of which drugs to try on specific targets, Griffin said.
"We identify the targets, and [Crooks] picks out the drugs that should interact with that target," Griffin said. "That's a real gift because so far he has had a hit rate that is better than baseball."
UAMS researchers are looking at which stressors prompt the brain to produce the plaque. They developed Type 2 diabetes, which prevents glucose from reaching neurons, and obesity as stressors by studying brain tissue.
The CDC lists age, genetics, education, diet, environment, high blood pressure and high cholesterol as some of the known or suspected risk factors.
Crooks' drugs will be tested on cell models grown in the lab and on animal models, such as mice, said Leslie Taylor, the medical school's vice chancellor for communications and marketing.
The research team's leadership also includes Steve Barger, a professor in the departments of geriatrics, neurobiology and developmental sciences, and internal medicine; and Robert Shmookler Reis, professor in the departments of geriatrics, biochemistry/molecular biology and pharmacology/toxicology.
A Section on 10/06/2016