Most drugs used for Alzheimer’s disease exhibit only marginal benefits, and no cure for the disease currently exists despite progress in developing treatments for the symptomatic relief. The National Institute on Aging has awarded Liou Sun, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a five-year R01 grant for $2.5 million to study the biology of aging interventions and neurodegenerations, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The study will determine whether suppression of growth hormone signaling and restriction of the amino acid methionine will prevent the development of behavioral, biochemical and histopathologic abnormalities of Alzheimer’s disease. The findings of this research could serve as a model to study the interaction of aging with Alzheimer’s disease, providing a new level of analysis of the human brain in health and disease.