Laura Ibanez, a postdoctoral research associate in neurogenetics and informatics in the laboratory of Carlos Cruchaga at the School of Medicine, has received a $281,370 grant from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation to study gene products associated with Alzheimer’s disease that can be found in the blood. The project will use next-generation sequencing to measure gene products known as cell-free ribonucleic acids (cfRNA) in the blood of Alzheimer’s patients, pre-symptomatic patients and cognitively normal individuals, to create novel prognostic and diagnostic models of Alzheimer’s disease risk and age at onset.
A coalition of philanthropists, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Leonard A. Lauder, created the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation in 2018. They have committed to funding nearly $50 million in research to improve Alzheimer’s treatments.