Alzheimer’s research - accelerated
The Indiana Biosciences Research Institute (IBRI) has been growing its footprint in Alzheimer’s disease research over the past three years. This research is being led by Alan Palkowitz, PhD, president and CEO of the IBRI, and Bruce Lamb, PhD, executive director of the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute at the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine. The team also includes Timothy Richardson, PhD, scientific director of molecular innovation at the IBRI, and Jeff Dage, PhD, senior research professor of neurology at the IU School of Medicine.
The IBRI is complementing and expanding on the IU School of Medicine’s Alzheimer’s disease pre-clinical research programs by bringing additional capabilities to the IUSM-Purdue TREAT-AD (Target Enablement to Accelerate Therapy Development for Alzheimer’s Disease) Drug Discovery Center.
The TREAT-AD Drug Discovery Center is one of only two centers in the entire U.S. and is funded by a five-year, $36 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Scientists at the TREAT-AD center and the IBRI are focused on neuroinflammation, a key driver and initiator of Alzheimer’s.
Inflammation is a normal part of the body’s immune defense against injury or infection, and, in this way, is beneficial. Inflammation is damaging when it occurs in healthy tissues or lasts too long. It is the overreaction that is thought to be dysregulated in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
IBRI scientists are targeting microglia, the immune cells of the brain, because genetic evidence suggests they are key to the disease process. They are currently developing therapies to test hypotheses for regulating microglia that may cause neuroinflammation.
The goal of TREAT-AD and its IBRI collaborators is to create molecules and generate data to share with the broader Alzheimer’s research community for further study. “Our hope is that we can create assets that could have a path to the clinic and could potentially be new medicines,” said Palkowitz. “Ideally, we’d create successful therapeutics that help to arrest development of Alzheimer’s earlier in the disease process, instead of later stages where it is difficult to alter the course of the disease.”
Lamb added, “It is a thrilling time to be part of the Alzheimer’s research community. For the first time in decades, we have two FDA-approved Alzheimer’s medications. While they may not be perfect, we can say we’ve moved into the treatment phase.”
As Lamb and Palkowitz prepare to apply for NIA renewal of the TREAT-AD Center program, they will be looking at expanding the study of neuroinflammation through combination therapy – researching drugs that target different mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis, identifying new biomarkers to better understand and study disease progression, and exploring a precision-medicine approach that best matches therapy to the individual patient.