The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging has receive a $1.9 million grant for Alzheimer’s disease research.
This $1.9 million grant will fund a five-year project that will focus on glucose transporter cells and these cells inability to deliver glucose to the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. This study will be led by Steven Barger, Ph.D.
“We were interested in determining what kind of mechanistic events might explain the lack of glucose uptake in the brain,” Barger said in a statement. “We started looking at the amount of glucose transporters in the surface of these brain cells, and there seems to be a problem with the delivery of the Glut1 transporter into the cell surface.”
The grant was awarded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging division.
College of Pharmacy associate professor Antiño Allen, Ph.D., will serve as a co-investigator on the project, alongside Barger. Multiple UAMS Department of Geriatrics personnel, including Yang Ou, Ph.D.; Jin Hee Sung, Ph.D.; Keri Crowder; and Larissa Porter, will also work on the project.
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