Find all causes of Alzheimer's disease and a cure

It has been five years since the inception of Cure Alzheimer’s Fund and its flagship research project, the “Alzheimer’s Genome Project”, led by the Chair of our Research Consortium, Rudy Tanzi from Massachusetts General Hospital. This bold and unprecedented scientific endeavor sought to identify the entire complement of human genes that influence one’s lifetime risk for Alzheimer’s Disease.

We are proud to announce that we have achieved the first major milestone in this project by identifying the vast majority of novel Alzheimer’s gene candidates in the human genome.

The next phase of the Alzheimer’s Genome Project involves prioritizing these genes for intensive efforts aimed at discovering the exact gene mutations and DNA variants that are at fault in genomes of Alzheimer’s patients. Studies of these gene defects then will be used to drive novel drug discovery.

We have already made considerable progress in this process. For example, we discovered two mutations in a novel Alzheimer’s gene called ADAM10 and have used them successfully to create transgenic mice that serve as animal models for novel drug discovery and for experiments aimed at better understanding the pathological process in Alzheimer’s disease.

The difficult task of determining exactly what goes wrong with these genes and how that information can be exploited to drive novel drug discovery lies directly ahead. We are fully confident that just as we met our first major milestone within budget and ahead of schedule, we will do the same as we enter this next major segment of our Roadmap in the race toward a cure.

Links:

• Research Roadmap
• Alzheimer's Genome Project