Cutting-Edge Enabling Programs
These programs will provide cutting-edge technical capabilities that will enhance and accelerate the work of a large number of faculty members across the various Stanford schools that are focused on AD. Our goal is to support each of these five enabling programs with a $2M endowment along with donated expendable funds. Portions of the endowed funding and expendable funding will be used to support and ensure outstanding, long-term leadership of each of the Enabling Programs.
Enabling Program 1. Assessment of New Therapies in Alzheimer’s Disease Mice
Stanford faculty members have discovered a number of new strategies and drugs that have the potential to delay or reverse progression of AD. A major ‘bottleneck’ at Stanford (and indeed nationally) is the ability to test these treatments in experimental mice designed to develop many of the key features of AD. This is a labor intensive process involving dozens of hours spent with each test mouse. Currently, Stanford faculty have a backlog of some five years worth of novel treatments that could be tested today. Drs. Tony Wyss-Coray and Frank Longo in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences have completed the early stages of developing an Alzheimer’s mouse testing program, and small molecules from Dr. Longo’s research team have provided the first novel compounds to be tested in these mice. Funding from this enabling program will allow Drs. Wyss-Coray and Longo to establish advanced technologies to allow more efficient and accurate monitoring of mouse behavior. Once a treatment is found to be effective in these mice, it is very likely that it can move on to the next step of development which is testing for safety in humans. This requires partnerships with industry – an important feature in our efforts to Translate Discoveries. Once safety in humans is determined, a treatment can then be evaluated for its ability to treat AD. Testing Alzheimer’s mice involves breeding sufficient numbers of mice and allowing them to age, application of the test treatment, memory testing and then analysis of brains and brain tissue as described below. This Enabling Program will allow us to expand the vital function of mouse testing at Stanford in order to expand and accelerate our testing of potential new treatments.
Enabling Program 2. Analysis of Brain Tissue
Dr. Stephen Smith in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology in the School of Medicine has developed a powerful and novel approach for obtaining 3-dimensional images of brain tissue that allows one to visualize and quantitate the connections between neurons that are lost in AD and other disorders. This technology also makes possible the detection of critical proteins that allow these connections to function and that are affected in neurodegenerative disorders. Dr. Mark Schnitzer in the Department of Biological Sciences in the School of Humanities and Sciences has developed innovative imaging technology that allows the investigator to directly view neurons and their connections within the brain of a living animal. The Center will make possible the further development of each of these capabilities in a coordinated fashion with assessment of AD as a high priority. These technologies will also make it possible to more effectively assess novel treatments in Alzheimer’s mice.