Physical Health United States Project #5094

Find all causes of Alzheimer's disease and a cure

by Cure Alzheimer's Fund

Find all causes of Alzheimer's disease and a cure

Project Report | Feb 6, 2025
Why are Some People Resilient to Alzheimer's Disease?

By Laurel Lyle | VP-Development Operations

Some individuals develop significant levels of amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles in their brains but never show clinical symptoms of dementia. The leading hypothesis to explain these resilient brains is that their neuroimmune system responds to Alzheimer’s-related pathology with lower levels of neuroinflammation, which is common in symptomatic cases of the disease. However, the factors triggering excessive neuroinflammation remain unclear.

Neuroinflammation is a healthy response to debris and pathology in the brain, but this response must be appropriate in level and duration or it can become damaging rather than protective. The pathology that leads to Alzheimer’s disease starts to develop many years before symptoms appear. Amyloid beta accumulates in the brain as plaque bundles, followed by the formation of tau tangles. Synapses are the points of communication between neurons and are essential for memory and cognition. Severe loss of synapses and neurons — neurodegeneration — thus disrupts the circuitry that encodes thought and memory. The neuroinflammatory response to Alzheimer’s-related pathologies is a more direct driver of the loss of neurons and their synapses than are the pathologies themselves. Understanding how the neuroimmune response in resilient people differs from that of people who develop clinical Alzheimer’s disease could allow the development of therapies designed to replicate this resilience in all people.

Find out more: https://bit.ly/49IeqfN

Teresa Gomez-Isla, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School

Karen E. Duff, Ph.D., University College London, England

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Oct 18, 2024
Mediterranean Diet and its affect on Alzheimer's

By Laurel Lyle | VP-Development Operations

Jun 20, 2024
CureAlz reaches $200 Million in Research Grants

By Laurel Lyle | VP-Development Operations

Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to funding the most promising research to prevent, slow or reverse Alzheimer’s disease, announced today that it has reached an important milestone—awarding more than $200 million in research grants to leading scientists throughout the world investigating the disease.

Since its establishment in 2004, Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (CureAlz) has supported more than 840 innovative grants led by more than 300 scientists resulting in 1,182 published peer-reviewed papers in prominent scientific journals. Many of these projects have yielded significant breakthroughs, resulting in findings contributing to new and critical avenues for the development of novel treatments.

“CureAlz was founded with one mission: to fund research that will accelerate prevention, treatment and cure for this disease,” said Henry McCance, Chair of Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. “Since the beginning, our mission and model have attracted others to join us in this fight, all who have been vital to what we have achieved. It has been an honor to deploy more than $200 million dollars in funding that is enabling and accelerating extraordinary research pursued by brilliant and determined scientists around the world.”

Funded projects have included:

The Alzheimer’s Genome Project™, the first large-scale, family-based study of the human genome specific to Alzheimer’s disease.
Projects that explore how the body’s complex immune responses may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
A consortium of experts to expand our understanding of the role of the APOE gene with Alzheimer’s disease.

“For 19 years, our Founders and Board of Directors have been steadfast in their commitment to our mission to end the terrible burden of Alzheimer’s. The field’s top scientists contribute their expertise and guidance to CureAlz, meaning science and data are always our lodestars to a cure,” said Meg Smith, CEO of Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. “Our leadership’s vision, drive and generosity are matched by that of our dedicated donor and researcher communities. We celebrate this milestone as the shared achievement it is and, at the same time, rededicate ourselves to accelerating an end to Alzheimer’s.

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