UAMS announced that Steven Barger, professor of geriatrics in the College of Medicine, has received a five-year federal grant to support his research on the role of glucose transport in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
The project will receive $382,500 in funding for the current grant year and a projected total of $1,912,500 over the five-year term. The grant was awarded by the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health.
The goal of the research is to test and potentially treat a newly discovered element of energy usage in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, UAMS said in a news release.
Barger’s study will examine how the regulation of genes affects glucose transport and delivery. It will explore how glucose delivery is affected by interactions between astrocytes and other types of cells — particularly microglia, a group of immune cells responsible for many of the inflammation-related changes seen in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
Leading theories about Alzheimer’s disease have focused for decades on the accumulation of amyloid plaques, the clumps of protein that form between neurons and disrupt their function.
“We know that amyloid accumulation starts many years before symptoms arise, so it may be that we’ll never catch that soon enough,” Barger said in the release. “But we feel that we might be able to intervene at the next step of the process, which seems to be the reduction in the delivery of glucose to the brain.”
Barger’s study will also attempt to identify chemical agents with the potential to reverse the glucose irregularities and serve as a treatment for Alzheimer’s.
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