The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has awarded $48.8 million to the IU School of Medicine The five-year grant will fund research into treatments for Alzheimer's disease.
IU will receive approximately $9.8 million a year through 2026 to continue work on Model Organism Development and Evaluation for Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, a framework of Alzheimer's research established by NIA in 2016.
Researchers hope that tests on animal models will resemble Alzheimer’s disease in humans, said Bruce Lamb, executive director of the Paul and Carole Stark Neurosciences Research Institute.
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“[The funds from NIA were to] generate new animal models, primarily in mice. And then phenotype those models — examine how closely they resemble to human Alzheimer's disease,” Lamb said. “Then, those that are most promising, we have a program, a preclinical testing core, that actually then tests new therapeutics that are nominated by the scientific community.”
This is a second renewal of the partnership between the School of Medicine and NIA, the largest branch for Alzheimer’s disease research within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Progress in viable treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has been limited, and NIA hopes this framework could advance results by drug testing animal models, Lamb noted.
Gary Landreth, Martin professor of Alzheimer's research, said it’s an exciting time to be working at IU-Indianapolis on contemporary research into Alzheimer's disease.
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“I can't believe I get to do this. It's an incredibly exciting place to be this moment in time…There's lots of federal dollars coming in here,” Landreth said. “It makes a difference in the economy, that makes a difference in the university, but it also puts us front and center of one of the most important biological investigations going on. This has real-world impact.”
