Catherine Clelland
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Alzheimer's disease (AD) slowly erases memory and independence, and most drugs developed for it have failed. One option is drug repurposing, testing existing medicines for a new use.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Pharmacology
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
mild cognitive impairment
dementia
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Test whether disrupted BH4 production, driven by functional variants in the GCH1 gene that controls BH4 synthesis, lowers BH4 levels and predicts cognitive impairment in patients with Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment.
- Test whether clinically available drugs that boost BH4 rescue neurotransmitter deficits in mouse models with reduced Gch1 combined with an Alzheimer's disease phenotype.
- Determine whether rescuing BH4 improves cognition in these Alzheimer's disease mouse models, as a basis for future clinical trials.
More about the research
This project focuses on tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), a helper molecule the brain needs to make amine neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin and nitric oxide, and that also tunes glutamate signaling. Earlier studies found low BH4 in AD patients. The gene GCH1 makes the enzyme that sets the pace of BH4 production, and its variants have been linked to thinking ability and to AD.
Why it matters
This work could identify a subgroup of people with Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive impairment whose memory problems stem partly from low BH4. They might benefit from existing drugs repurposed to boost it. Results could form the basis for future randomized clinical trials of treatments targeted to patients with BH4 abnormalities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Cynthia Munro
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Determine how cortisol response to acute stress, induced with the Trier Social Stress Test and measured in saliva, relates to memory and executive-function performance after stress in people with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease.
Natalie Parde
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Computer Science
Design large language model (LLM) methods that detect mild cognitive impairment and dementia from transcribed spontaneous speech, and explore whether they can detect the earliest preclinical stage of Alzheimer's disease.
David Ziegler
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Psychology
Determine the minimum effective dose of MediTrain, a closed-loop digital meditation program that trains focused attention, for improving cognitive control and reducing stress in older adults, using a nationwide mobile randomized controlled trial of 3,240 participants.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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