MIAMI: Miller School researchers Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D, and Derek Dykxhoorn, Ph.D, have won a three-year U.S. Department of Defense contract to ascertain and analyze induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease patients with specific Alzheimer’s linked genetic mutations.
They will lead a Hussman Institute for Human Genomics (HIHG) research team that will develop a screening tool to identify significant differences between the iPSCs in individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) versus individuals without dementia. The results of this screen will likely point to the production of beta amyloid levels in the culture supernatant, which has been linked to AD, along with other cellular phenotypes such as expression of phosphorylated tau.