Groundbreaking research into Alzheimer’s disease will continue at the University of Lethbridge thanks to a grant of $918,000 over five years from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Dr. Athan Zovoilis, Canada Research Chair in RNA Bioinformatics and Genomics at the University of Lethbridge, says the funding landscape is extremely competitive and this support from CIHR is an enormous success.
“With no reliable cure for Alzheimer’s and an aging population, Canada is in great need of interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research and this funding could help us contribute to the development of new treatments.”
“This award demonstrates the exceptional research being done at the U of L,” says Dr. Dena McMartin, the university’s vice-president of research. “With more than 747,000 Canadians suffering from dementia, research like this is both important and urgent as we work toward medical breakthroughs to slow or cure the disease.”
In earlier work, Zovoilis and his team found a new molecular mechanism involved in Alzheimer’s disease in mice and confirmed the same mechanism is at work in people with the disease.
“It is fundamentally important to understand these early molecular changes in the brain as they may provide a target for therapeutic interventions early in the progression of the disease before significant and irreversible brain damage occurs,” adds Zovoilis.