Vanderbilt to search for already-approved drugs that could be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s disease accounts for 60%-80% of all dementia cases in the U.S. and is the country’s sixth leading cause of death.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Vanderbilt University Medical Center is conducting a study that will search for already-approved drugs that could potentially be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
Thanks to a five-year, $4.4 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, a team of doctors and a multidisciplinary research team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center will be searching for drugs used to treat other diseases that could be studied in order to treat Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias (ADRD).
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, AD is estimated to affect 6.9 million Americans, and if no cure were to be found, would be expected to affect some 13.8 million Americans by 2060, VUMC said. AD accounts for 60%-80% of all dementia cases in the U.S. and is the country’s sixth leading cause of death.
“While a couple of new drugs have been shown to slow the progression of early-stage Alzheimer’s, there are currently no treatments available to halt or reverse the course of AD or any of the less prevalent major forms of dementia,” said Wei, associate professor of Biomedical Informatics. “We’ve meanwhile developed new, systematic methodologies for detecting drug repurposing signals in molecular data and validating them inpatient data. Given the continued urgency around AD, we’re very pleased to be granted NIH support for applying our methods to ADRD.”
For more on the study by VUMC, click here.
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