Barbara Snider
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Poor sleep is increasingly seen both as a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and as an early sign of the brain changes behind it. Sleep and wakefulness change how much of certain proteins appear in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the liquid that bathes the brain and spinal cord.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
sleep
insomnia
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- 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.
- Measure how chronic suvorexant affects amyloid-β, total tau and other phosphorylated tau forms in both cerebrospinal fluid and blood plasma, sampled at baseline, 3 months and 6 months.
- Determine whether suvorexant changes CSF markers of microglial immune activity, synapse function and non-tau nerve cell damage, alongside overnight polysomnography sleep recordings.
- Collect pharmacokinetic (drug level) and safety data within an adaptive randomized trial design to inform a full Alzheimer's secondary prevention trial with suvorexant.
More about the research
Two of these proteins drive AD: amyloid-β (Aβ), which clumps into plaques, and tau, which forms tangles inside nerve cells. This raises a practical question. Could a sleep medicine slow the disease process in people who already have early Alzheimer's changes but no memory problems yet?
Why it matters
Older adults with insomnia who already show amyloid buildup are at risk of developing Alzheimer's dementia. If months of suvorexant treatment lowers tau and other disease markers in spinal fluid and blood, an existing sleep medicine could be tested as a way to delay Alzheimer's before symptoms begin. The safety, dosing and biomarker data from this trial will shape how such a prevention trial is designed.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ling Wu
North Carolina Central University, NC·Neuroscience
Validate newly discovered phosphorylated tau (p-tau) markers for early Alzheimer's diagnosis, including distinguishing mild cognitive impairment from normal cognition, in patient plasma and cerebrospinal fluid.
Yunjie Tong
Purdue University, IN·Neuroscience
Measure how strongly changes in cerebral blood volume, the amount of blood in the brain, are coupled to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) movement during both wake and sleep states.
Whitney Wharton
Emory University, GA·Neuroscience
Test whether sex hormones measured in both blood and cerebrospinal fluid, estradiol, estrone, progesterone and testosterone, differentially influence Alzheimer's risk factors including inflammatory markers, sleep and cerebral blood flow in middle-aged women.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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