ISU Researcher Gets Grant to Study Alzheimer's Disease

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has granted Illinois State University Professor Nathan Mortimer $293,000 to investigate the link between the immune system and Alzheimer's, reports The Pantagraph . The two-year grant will fund research in Mortimer's laboratory to examine the amyloid beta (A-beta) protein, which is believed to build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. "One of the big questions in the field is what is A-beta and why is it there?" Mortimer notes. "If it only exists to build up into plaques, which can interfere with normal function and cause Alzheimer's disease, why would it last through millions of years of evolution?" How the protein operates within the immune system will comprise a large focus of the research, which could help neuro-biologists understand the association between the immune system and brain inflammation in people with Alzheimer's. Mortimer's work demonstrated that when A-beta is removed from fruit flies, the insects could not develop an immune response to infection, while the addition of human A-beta causes development of an autoimmune disease in the flies.