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Jackson Lab to receive $2.7 million federal grant to study Alzheimer's

Bangor Daily News - 5/16/2017

May 16--BAR HARBOR, Maine -- The Jackson Laboratory, over the next five years, will receive $2.7 million in grant money to study the connection between healthy aging and the development of Alzheimer's disease.

The federal grant money is part of a larger $25 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, whose two-pronged funding approach also is subsidizing Alzheimer's research at Indiana University, Jackson Lab officials indicated Tuesday in a news release.

Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia, affects more than 5 million Americans. The vast majority of cases start to show symptoms later in life, but those cases are varied in progression and severity, according to lab officials.

The grant will help fund research into the connection between "normal cognitive aging and the memory decline of Alzheimer's disease," which "appear to share molecular pathways," Jackson Lab Assistant Professor Catherine Kaczorowski said in the news release.

"We expect that by identifying genetic factors and mechanisms underlying normal aging, we will find targets for intervention against Alzheimer's," Kaczorowski said.

Charting the development of Alzheimer's is made difficult by "all the environmental factors -- from diet and exercise to economic status and education level -- that may affect Alzheimer's susceptibility," she said.

A diet that is high in fat and sugar, for example, contributes to peripheral inflammation in the brain, which could lead to greater susceptibility to Alzheimer's, but aside from that, "we have very little molecular and functional data from patients at the earliest stages of the disease, before cognitive symptoms appear," Kaczorowski said in the release.

Researchers at Jackson Lab will measure mice memory function across their lifespan to identify "gene variants to protect against cognitive decline" in hopes of using those same "biomarkers" to then identify the same genetic factors and mechanisms in adult memory decline.

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