Two VCU professors awarded grants for Alzheimer’s research

By Mike Porter

Two Virginia Commonwealth University professors have been awarded a grant through the 2008-2009 Alzheimer's and Related Diseases Research Award Fund (ARDRAF).  

Shijun Zhang, Ph.D., department of medicinal chemistry, and Tailiang Guo, Ph.D., department of pharmacology and toxicology, were awarded a $40,000 grant to support their research “Bivalent ligands targeting amyloid-ß-peptide and lipid rafts.”
Researchers are increasingly recognizing the roles of small, soluble oligomers of Aß, rather than the insoluble Aß fibrils, as the major toxic species in early cognitive impairment in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.  

Inhibiting Aß oligomerization could lead to potential treatments. A number of small molecules (including curcumin, a natural product mainly used as a food coloring agent) have been discovered to disrupt this process. Yet, only a few have moved to clinical trial due to their low in vivo potencies in blocking Aß oligomerization or aggregation.

There’s growing evidence that lipid rafts, the highly packed microdomains in cell membrane, play an important role in facilitating Aß oligomerization and toxicity.  The researchers will investigate this relationship in the hope of developing Aß oligomerization inhibitors. 

Specifically, the study will design, synthesize and biologically characterize a series of bivalent ligands containing curcumin and 3ß-cholesterylamine connected through a linker. The investigators will evaluate the bivalent ligands’ ability to inhibit Aß oligomerization in in vivo assays.

The Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases Research Award Fund was established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1982 to stimulate innovative investigations into Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. The fund supports research into the causes, epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of the disorder; public policy and the financing of care; and the social and psychological impacts of the disease upon the individual, family and community.

The ARDRAF competition is administered by VCU’s Virginia Center on Aging.