- The Florey’s Dr Francesca Alves has been awarded a $735,000 fellowship from the Dementia Australia Research Foundation to develop a potential diagnostic tool and a new targeted treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
- In Alzheimer’s, brain cells fail to produce enough energy to stay healthy and function properly and this failure is linked to brain cell damage and death.
- Dr Alves is developing a new approach to measure energy production in the brain and will also test whether delivering energy directly into brain cells could be a new treatment option for Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting more than 400,000 people in Australia alone, and is also a leading cause of death worldwide.
Dr Francesca Alves, a Senior Research Fellow at The Florey, believes earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments are key to combating the disease as cases rise globally.
To support her research exploring how the brain produces energy, Dr Alves has been awarded the Race Against Dementia Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the Dementia Australia Research Foundation worth $735,000.
“In Alzheimer’s disease, brain cells struggle to produce enough energy to stay healthy and do their jobs properly,” Dr Alves said.
“This energy failure may be a key reason why cells become damaged and die, leading to memory loss and other symptoms. Yet most current treatments do not address this problem.
“With this project we will develop a new brain scan that can measure energy production in the brain. If successful, it could also aid in early detection of Alzheimer’s disease.
“The final part of the project will be developing and testing a new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease by delivering energy directly into brain cells.”
Dr Alves is leading one of 23 new research projects worth a combined $4.5m funded by the Dementia Australia Research Foundation.
