Research Project: A chemoproteomics approach to identify molecular changes in Alzheimer’s disease for therapy and diagnostic development
PI: Dr. Gabriela Chiosis, MSKCC
Co-investigator: Dr. Lorenz Studer, MSKCC
Collaborators: Dr. Larry Goldstein, UCSD; Dr. Wenjie Luo, WCMC
The CART Fund is pleased to announce that Gabriela Chiosis, Ph.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, has been selected to receive a 2016 Alzheimer’s research grant in the amount of $50,000. The grant will be awarded on May 3, 2016 at the annual meeting of The CART Fund in Columbia, SC.
Current Alzheimer’s disease (AD) treatments only suppress symptoms as the disease continues to progress. For treatments that slow or reverse the disease, we must identify the proteins associated with AD progression before the neurons die. Attempts so far have been hindered by a lack of access to patient neurons in amounts sufficient for analyses and of sensitive techniques that inquire into biochemical changes that occur in neurons during disease initiation.
This proposal aims to overcome these limitations; it combines two novel technical advances: neurons derived from the skin cells of AD patients and a biochemical sensor for proteins enriched during neuron’s transition from normal to diseased. We hypothesize that combining the two techniques will detect early-stage changes that can be used to diagnose AD before the clinical symptoms appear and can be used to develop treatments that reverse or delay disease progression. In the timeline and resources available through this grant, we propose to perform a proof-of-principle study. The larger goal of our efforts is to find molecular commonalities that can be used to 1. classify 2. diagnose and 3. treat AD.
The Coins for Alzheimer’s Research Trust Fund (CART) is a project of the Rotary Clubs of North America. Founded in 1995 in Sumter SC, CART provides financial support for Alzheimer’s research projects that are yet to be supported by extensive preliminary data but have the potential to substantially advance biomedical research.