Researchers use US$40.5m grant to study Alzheimer’s risk

Penn Medicine on Tuesday said its researchers, along with investigators at 15 other institutions in the United States and Canada, are using a US$40.5 million government grant to collect data on genetic and lifestyle factors that may contribute to the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in individuals of Asian ancestry, reports Genome Web.

The Asian Cohort for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACAD) study will be supported by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging and is led by principal investigators at Penn Medicine, Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Southern California. The project represents the first effort to build an Alzheimer’s disease genetics cohort for Canadians and Americans of Asian ancestry.

“While Asians are the fastest growing minority in both the US and Canada, they are disproportionately underrepresented in Alzheimer’s disease research,” said Li-San Wang, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pen.
Full report on Genome Web site