$54 Million Awarded to Consortium Working on Alzheimer Research

The National Institute of Aging (NIA) has awarded $54 million to a consortium of centers working together on research on the treatment and assessment of Alzheimer's disease.

The five-year grant, one of the largest ever awarded by the NIA, doubles the support for the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), formed in 1991 as an agreement between the NIA and the University of California, San Diego. The previous 5-year grant was $27 million.

The ADCS is comprised of Alzheimer's researchers at 83 locations in the U.S. and Canada and conducts coordinated clinical trials of new treatments and prevention measures. Nearly 2,500 volunteers have participated in 13 research protocols over the past 10 years.

New studies planned in the upcoming five years will focus on:

• Mild cognitive impairment, to see if conversion to Alzheimer's can be prevented with vitamin E or donepezil, a drug that increases acetylcholine, a brain chemical linked with memory;
• High doses of vitamin combinations (folate/B6/B12) that have been shown to reduce homocysteine levels, a possible risk factor for Alzheimers;
• A potent, naturally occurring antioxidant called indole-3-propionic acid;
• Valproate, an antipsychotic drug that may delay the emergence of agitation and psychosis found in Alzheimer's patients;
• Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs that have been linked to the development of Alzheimers;
• Improved assessment measures for evaluating the clinical effectiveness of drugs being tested for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

"In the next 10 years of less, we should be able to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Leon Thal, chair of the Department of Neurosciences at the UCSD School of Medicine and director of the UCSD's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.

"In the past 10 years, thanks to support from the NIA, we have made significant progress in the fight against Alzheimer's disease. We've established a group of nationally and internationally recognized Alzheimer's researchers. With multiple sites working together, the ADCS is large enough to generate significant results in a reasonable period of time, giving us better data from which to draw conclusions," Thal said.

"NIA is excited about this next round of the ADCS," said Neil Buckholtz, Ph.D., director of NIA's project and dementia research. "We have new assessment and diagnostic tools and a better sense than ever of which drugs might have a chance of working. I am expecting that we will make some inroads against the disease, with the ADCS playing a critical role in facilitating the testing of possible new treatments."

Other sources: NIA, University of California, San Diego