Colin Combs
University of North Dakota, ND·Neuroscience
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is usually thought of as a brain disease. Growing evidence, however, shows changes elsewhere in the body that may feed back on the brain.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
amyloid-beta
AppNL-G-F mice
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Define oral health across age and disease stage in AppNL-G-F Alzheimer's model mice, including the oral microbiome, enamel thinning and cavities.
- Determine whether release of amyloid-beta into saliva is required for oral bacterial imbalance and declining oral health in AppNL-G-F mice.
- Test whether the oral dysbiosis itself causes oral decline and worsens brain disease, and whether changing the oral microbiome lessens brain pathology in the mice.
- Test whether gut-selective anti-α4β7 antibodies, which block T cells from entering the intestine, reduce baseline and colitis-worsened gut inflammation and memory deficits in AppNL-G-F mice.
- Assess whether gut-targeted antibody therapy lowers brain amyloid-beta, gliosis, synapse loss and cytokine levels, and whether crossing with Ltatm1Dch mice, which lack Peyer's patches and lymph nodes, prevents brain changes.
More about the research
This research explores two such routes: the mouth and the gut. Both projects use AppNL-G-F mice, which are engineered to build up amyloid-beta (Aβ), the protein that forms plaques in the Alzheimer's brain. They ask whether problems in the mouth or intestines are part of the disease and whether they help drive it.
Why it matters
If changes in the mouth and gut help drive Alzheimer's disease, they could become new things to monitor and new places to treat. Oral changes may serve as markers of disease progression. Gut-targeted anti-α4β7 antibodies, already available in the clinic, could be repurposed to dampen the inflammatory part of AD without needing to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kim Dore
University of California-San Diego, CA·Neuroscience
Measure PSD-95 palmitoylation, the fatty tag that anchors this scaffold protein in synapses, across brain regions differently affected by Alzheimer's in APP/PS1 model mice and postmortem human brain samples.
Xin Li
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Determine how fungal stimulatory RNA (fsRNA), a newly identified fungal RNA, triggers innate immune responses in the intestine, using fungal genetic engineering and long-read RNA sequencing.
Ping Zhang
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how periodontitis regulates activation of microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, in Alzheimer's disease model mice, using three different experimental models of periodontal disease.
The school
University of North Dakota: 5 labs on PI Pages, $197M a year on research, 112 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.