SCIENTIST SEEKS KEY TO EARLY DETECTION OF ALZHEIMER'S

A neuroscientist who has been at the forefront of research on Alzheimer's disease for more than 20 years has been awarded $1 million by the Alzheimer's Association to continue his studies.

Paul Coleman, who received the association's Pioneer Award, is known worldwide for investigations that are central to the development of better diagnostic tests and treatment. The award recognizes recent work by his research team that could lead to a simple test which might one day tell healthy people whether they are in the earliest stages of the disease.

"We know the disease has been working its mischief in the brain for decades before somebody starts to notice symptoms and goes to a physician and gets diagnosed," says Coleman, a professor at the Center on Aging and Developmental Biology at the Medical Center. "The fact that the disease develops for perhaps 50 years before it becomes a serious problem presents a wonderful window of opportunity for diagnosis and treatment.

"We want to be able to detect the disease before symptoms appear, then stop or slow its progression sufficiently so that the person can live out his or her normal life span without ever showing symptoms."

Coleman and other scientists have long wondered how both sick and healthy cells can be interspersed throughout the brains of the 4 million people in the United States who have the disease. Understanding why some brain cells die while others nearby are thriving may be the key to understanding the disease itself, he says.

The technology the team has developed allows scientists to study brain cells in unprecedented detail by simultaneously measuring the activity of several genes in a single cell in order to see which genes are turned on and which are dormant. They've looked at a few dozen genes thus far and plan soon to check out the activity of 20,000 genes from a single cell simultaneously.

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