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Scientists lead the field IRISH scientists are to lead
the way in finding therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease in a ?14.6million
research project.
Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and National University of Ireland Galway
(NUIG) are teaming up with pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
on the programme. They will be enlisting the help of hundreds of Irish
people to try to identify early indicators.
“We will be working over the next five years to identify markers
in people which could help in the development of treatments to slow down
the disease,” explained lead investigator, Professor Shane O’Mara
of TCD’s Institute of Neuroscience.
Enterprise Trade and Employment Minister Micheál Martin —
who announced the IDA Ireland-supported project — said it would
raise Ireland’s international profile in new medical discoveries.
The most common way of identifying the onset of Alzheimer’s involves
a series of simple word matching tests, with diminished ability in these
indicating the disease or other dementia.
But the TCD-NUIG work will combine these behavioural measures with comparisons
of electronic activity in the brain and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
between people with Alzheimer’s, those with mild cognitive impairment
and people who have aged successfully.
“There are few if any studies of this scale where all three measurements
are combined to identify the differences between those with dementia in
different scales and people with no difficulties. We will carry out up
to 10 studies with 20 to 30 people involved in each,” said Prof
O’Meara.
The aim is that, by identifying the factors that indicate the possible
development of Alzheimer’s, GSK will be able to develop pharmaceutical
therapies to slow or restrict those factors.
“I can’t say we’ll be able to cure the disease in five
or 10 years‚ time, but what could be developed is a set of standard
tests that could be administered to people in their 50s or early 60s which
would help predict their chances of getting Alzheimer’s,”
he said. |
