Elizabeth Head
University of California-Irvine, CA·Neuroscience
Can a drug already used to prevent organ transplant rejection also protect the aging brain from Alzheimer's disease? Alzheimer's disease (AD) slowly destroys memory and thinking, and few treatments slow it.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
calcineurin
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Mar 2030
What they work on
- Test whether long-term calcineurin blocking with tacrolimus or Q134R preserves learning, executive function, and spatial and object memory in aging beagles compared with placebo.
- Measure Alzheimer's biomarkers in blood and cerebrospinal fluid, including NfL, amyloid-beta and GFAP, to see whether calcineurin inhibitors lessen signs of brain damage in aging dogs.
- Use MRI on a human scanner to track brain structure, metabolism and blood vessel damage in beagles treated with tacrolimus, Q134R or placebo.
- Examine brain tissue for amyloid-beta deposits, glial activation, synapse damage, nerve cell loss and changes in the calcineurin–NFAT pathway after five years of treatment.
- Train 3–4 junior Alzheimer's researchers per year through tailored curricula, one-on-one mentoring and professional skills workshops at the UC Irvine Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.
More about the research
One suspected driver is calcineurin, an enzyme that removes phosphate tags from other proteins. Signs that calcineurin is overactive appear early in human cognitive decline and in mouse models of AD. The lab's research tests this idea in aging dogs and also trains new Alzheimer's researchers.
Why it matters
People at risk of Alzheimer's disease have few options for preventing or slowing it. If blocking calcineurin keeps aging dogs' memory and brain health intact, the results could support testing tacrolimus, an existing approved drug, or Q134R in human Alzheimer's trials. The training program aims to build a skilled workforce for Alzheimer's and related dementia research.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Barbara Snider
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether 6 months of suvorexant, a sleep drug that blocks wake-promoting orexin signals, lowers the ratio of phosphorylated to unmodified tau-181 in spinal fluid of cognitively normal, amyloid-positive older adults with insomnia, compared with placebo.
David Geldmacher
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience
Enroll and follow about 525 community volunteers each year, cognitively unimpaired, with mild cognitive impairment or with mild dementia, at least 40% Black or African American, using standard national tests plus social determinants of health, body composition and actigraphy measures.
Kaitlin B Casaletto
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Neuroscience
Identify networks of more than 150 synaptic proteins in autopsied brain tissue from 869 Rush Memory and Aging Project participants that relate to cognitive resilience, meaning better thinking than brain pathology would predict.
The school
University of California-Irvine: 46 labs on PI Pages, $645M a year on research, 524 research doctorates a year.
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