Sally Frautschy, a professor-in-residence in the department of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has received a $300,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and the Alzheimer’s Association to fund her work on brain inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease. The grants are awarded to propel research “at the frontier of investigating the role of the immune system in Alzheimer’s disease,” foundation officials said.
Frautschy's research focuses on neuroinflammator mechanisms in Alzheimer's disease. Inflammation in the brain has a significant impact on the development of the characteristic tangles of tau protein in brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Frautschy’s project will use a laboratory model to examine the role of inflammation in the proliferation of tau proteins in the brain. This research seeks to uncover, for the first time, the role of the immune inflammatory response on tau development and determine whether processes involved in normal synapse elimination are also implicated in the spread of tau across synapses.
