Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK) has awarded £100,000 to researchers based at Scottish universities to help develop future treatments for dementia.
The award is part of a £4m funding announcement to help UK researchers find new ways to treat, diagnose and prevent dementia.
Affecting more than 944,000 people in the UK, dementia is a general term for the impaired ability to think, remember or make decisions on a daily basis.
The University of Strathclyde’s Dr Shuzo Sakata has been awarded £70,000 to further understand the link between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and potentially reveal new ways to prevent the neurological disease.
Despite previous research demonstrating associations between changes in sleep patterns and dementia, the reason for this still remains unclear.
The pilot project will identify how sleep disruption affects the brain’s immune cells (microglia), which protect the brain and remove debris, including amyloid, a harmful protein that builds up in AD.
Using imaging techniques to investigate the immune cells in different areas of the brain in mice, the project will investigate how amyloid affects the calcium levels in microglia while sleeping and when awake, as well as how a lack of sleep affects the calcium levels.
The additional £30,000 will be awarded to Dr Paula Beltran-Lobo from the University of Edinburgh, who will investigate how the protective blood-brain barrier becomes damaged by dementia-causing diseases.
Tau builds up in astrocytes, star-shaped cells that support the blood-brain barrier, in diseases such as AD and frontotemporal dementia, which can interfere with brain function and lead to the blood-brain barrier becoming ‘leaky’.
Using brain tissue from people who had high levels of tau protein when they died, the project aims to gain a better understanding of how the blood-brain barrier is affected by dementia.
To date, ARUK has provided more than £10m of funding for dementia research in Scotland in the past two decades.
Dr Julia Dudley, head of strategic programmes, ARUK, commented: “It’s essential that we keep investing in studies like these to accelerate progress towards a cure and to end the fear, harm and heartbreak from dementia.”