Medicine & Health

Longtime St. Louis benefactor Joanne Knight has committed up to $11.5 million to Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to support an innovative clinical trial aimed at preventing Alzheimer’s disease by treating people before the first signs of the illness appear in the brain.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine are conducting an Alzheimer’s prevention trial with young adults from high-risk families to evaluate whether an investigational drug can clear a key Alzheimer’s protein, amyloid beta, and slow or stop the disease.

Two research teams at Washington University — one led by Joyce Balls-Berry; the other led by Darrell Hudson and Ganesh Babulal — have received grants totaling $7 million to advance racial equity in Alzheimer’s disease research.

The Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network Trials Unit (DIAN-TU) at Washington University School of Medicine has announced that it will be targeting two key Alzheimer’s proteins — amyloid and tau — as part of its Tau Next Generation Alzheimer’s prevention trial.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have developed an approach to estimating when a person who is likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, but has no cognitive symptoms, will start showing signs of Alzheimer’s dementia.

Andrew Yoo, associate professor of developmental biology at the School of Medicine, has received two research grants for work on Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegenerative pathways.

A research team at Washington University School of Medicine has identified potential new treatment targets for Alzheimer’s disease, as well as existing drugs that have therapeutic potential against these targets.

Cyrus Raji, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiology and of neurology at the School of Medicine, received a three-year $2.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his research titled “Neuroinflammation and Alzheimer’s Disease Imaging Biomarkers in Midlife Obesity.”

An investigational Alzheimer’s drug showed mixed results, reducing molecular markers of disease and curbing neurodegeneration, without demonstrating evidence of cognitive benefit, in a clinical trial led by School of Medicine researchers.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have found that high levels of a normal protein associated with reduced heart disease also protect against Alzheimer’s-like damage in mice, opening up new approaches to slowing or stopping brain damage and cognitive decline in people with Alzheimer’s.