A tragic cluster of Alzheimer’s cases in a South American family is drawing intense interest from medical researchers, including some in Alabama, and could lead to breakthroughs in fighting the mind-destroying disease.
Explaining the cluster discovery in Alabama recently was Dr. Ken Kosik of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Kosik is one of the scientists working in Colombia, and he has now partnered with Huntsville’s HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology to broaden the investigation into Alzheimer’s.
“Because we know that their disease comes from this one mutation, and they get it so early, and they get it like clockwork in their ’40s, they become almost like a living laboratory,” Kosik said.
HudsonAlpha will now use its high-speed gene sequencers to read the DNA code of other Colombian families that do not have the identified gene, but also show signs of early-onset brain degeneration. If you would like to contribute to this project, visit www.hudsonalpha.org/memory-and-mobility-fund.
Check out the full story from AL.com.
