The Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation Inc. has awarded UAMS a $100,000 grant to support the Joan Richards Taylor Alzheimer’s Disease Endowment Fund in the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging.
The grant was given in recognition of the work and dedication of Sue T. Griffin, for her decades of research into Alzheimer’s disease. The funds will be used to support further research conducted by Griffin and her colleague, Meenakshisundaram Balasubramaniam.
In 1995, Charles Taylor created an endowment at UAMS to support Alzheimer’s research. Joan Taylor died in 1996 from Alzheimer’s, and Charles Taylor passed away a few weeks later.
Griffin is the Alexa and William T. Dillard Chair in Geriatric Research, a distinguished faculty scholar in the College of Medicine and director of research at the Institute on Aging. She is also a professor in the college’s departments of Neurobiology & Developmental Sciences, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry.
Griffin’s work includes the discovery of a type of inflammation in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. She went on to show how the inflammation contributes to formation of amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and Lewy bodies in the brains of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients, as well as its connections to greater risk of the disease in certain individuals.
In January 2024, UAMS announced that a potential new drug to prevent Alzheimer’s disease in people with the “Alzheimer’s gene” was discovered by Griffin and Balasubramaniam. Their findings were published in Communications Biology and include discoveries of a druggable target and a drug candidate.
A press release from UAMS said that the team that discovered the new drug can now “with certainty” propose funding of a new NIH-sponsored Program Project aimed at the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.
“The Taylor Foundation has been a mainstay of support for our Alzheimer’s disease research at UAMS for decades,” Griffin said in the press release. “Though phenomenally talented, my team cannot conduct groundbreaking research without grant funding. We are forever indebted to the Taylor Foundation’s support.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
