Professor Ravi Allada Receives Alzheimer’s Association Research Grant (AARG)
November 15, 2017
Professor Ravi Allada is a recent recipient of this year’s Alzheimer’s Association Research Grant (AARG). This grant was created to provide funding that would allow independent investigators to develop preliminary or pilot data to test procedures and develop new hypotheses related to Alzheimer’ disease. Professor Allada and his lab have done research exploring the relationship between beta-amyloid and sleep. Beta-amyloid is a protein fragment that is thought to have a toxic link to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. With the help of this grant, Professor Allada and his team will interrogate fruit fly genes to test the hypothesis that sleep deprivation increases beta-amyloid level and identify molecular pathways that mediate the effects of sleep deprivation on beta-amyloid toxicity. This research will ultimately shed some light on how impaired sleep increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and could lead to methods of improving sleep and reducing the toxicity of beta-amyloid.