An investigation into the estrogen-brain link will be led by the Tulane Brain Institute’s multidisciplinary team, whose expertise spans across the pharmacology, physiology and molecular biology industries.
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Tulane University continues to be a trusted pioneer in the developing world of biotechnology research. The university has been awarded a grant from the National Institute on Aging, a sector of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH), to explore the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease, as well as several other neurogenerative diseases, more often affect post-menopausal women with low levels of estrogen. An investigation into the estrogen-brain link will be led by the Tulane Brain Institute’s multidisciplinary team, whose expertise spans across the pharmacology, physiology and molecular biology industries.
At $14 million, the size of the grant reflects the dire need to find a new angle from which to treat neurodegenerative diseases. While there has been extensive peer-reviewed research into the positive effects of high estrogen levels in aging women, there are gaps that do not explain why the positive effects aren’t seen in women diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
This study will take place over five years, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and Louisiana State University’s Health Sciences Center. Broken down into four separate projects, dedicated researchers will explore topics such as how subjects’ diets work in conjunction with hypertension to regulate female hormone production.
The principal investigator, Jill Daniel, has formulated a hypothesis to guide research efforts. It reads, “We hypothesize that cardiovascular and metabolic disease alter the neuroprotective effects of estrogens. This comprehensive research program will determine mechanisms by which a healthy brain responds differently to estrogens as compared to an unhealthy one and identify conditions under which estrogen administration will or will not prevent or delay age-related cognitive disease.”
Other divisions of Tulane University have been involved in exciting research in the last decade, primarily for finding innovative ways to use the most modern technologies in the biotechnology toolbox.
In 2020, a Temple University study was conducted in collaboration with Tulane’s National Primate Research Center, focusing on CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing for the removal of an SIV virus from a primate. The SIV virus was selected due to the pathogenetic similarity to HIV in humans, in hopes of translating the findings for human use.
Roughly two years ago, the NIH entrusted a $225,000 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant to Tulane to work in collaboration with Columbia University in an effort to engineer an improved screening test for Lyme disease. The goal of this research is to improve the detection rate of 40% seen when using the current test. Researchers will utilize Enable Biosciences’ Antibody Detection by Agglutination-PCR (ADAP) technology to more accurately detect Lyme disease, enabling faster diagnosis and subsequent treatment.
In 2015, early into the research of the vast potential that translational medicine offers, Tulane researchers explored the use of stem cells as a treatment for ischemic stroke recovery. The study’s lead investigator, Jean-Pyo Lee, Ph.D., described the mechanism as a “bystander effect that elicits reduced inflammation and blood-brain barrier damage”, granting a “much-extended treatment window” of 24 hours as opposed to the maximum five hours.
