Ulster scientists to lead new project into alzheimer's damage
Thursday, 19 July 2007
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Ulster researchers are powering a year-long project to examine the role of insulin in Alzheimer's Disease in a bid to find a way to stop the disease from damaging brain cells.
The year-long pilot project, funded by UK charity the Alzheimer's Research Trust, will be carried out by biomedical researchers at the University of Ulster led by Dr Christian Holscher along with scientists from the University of Dundee led by Dr Calum Sutherland.
Their collaboration hopes to find out more about the abnormal changes in insulin signalling in the brain that occur in genetic material from a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.
They also hope to see if a protein called GLP1 (currently being investigated as a new treatment for diabetes) can return insulin signalling to normal and reverse some of the early cellular changes seen in Alzheimer's disease.
The Alzheimer's Trust said that establishing a link between diabetes and Alzheimer's could lead to people lowering their chances of each disease by making lifestyle changes.
Dr Holscher and Dr Sutherland began their collaboration after meeting at an Alzheimer's Research Trust's conference.
Dr Sutherland's lab has experience in the study of signalling within brain cells, while Dr Holscher's laboratory in Coleraine is the leading authority on the GLP1 protein.
It has already established an animal model to study this protein's effect on the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
Harriet Millward, deputy chief executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said it was vital to understand more about the link between dementia and diabetes.
More than two million people in the UK today have diabetes, which puts them at increased risk of developing dementia, and 700,000 people already have dementia, a number forecast to double within a generation.
"We're very excited about this new study.
"People with diabetes are at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's, but nobody really knows why. Indeed Alzheimer's has even been called type-3 diabetes," she said.
"We desperately need to find out more about the links between these two conditions in the hope that we can find simple lifestyle changes to help people lower their risk of developing dementia as well as long-term drug treatments for people whose lives are already blighted."
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