SEK 40M for research on Alzheimer’s, ALS and Parkinson’s at Umeå University and SLU
NEWS
The Erling-Persson Family Foundation is donating SEK 40 million towards research at Umeå University. The research will lead to faster, safer and more effective diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of severe neurological diseases.
"This is an extremely important funding. This means that Umeå University can carry out a strong demonstration on research into severe neurological diseases. The ambition is to obtain research results that are of direct benefit to patients and their families," says Umeå University Vice-Chancellor Göran Sandberg.
More than 100,000 Swedes are afflicted and over 10,000 people fall ill every year by neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson's disease.
What is lacking for these neurodegenerative diseases today are treatments and medicines that prevent, cure or affect the disease processes. Effective treatment requires that patients receive an early diagnosis so that proper treatment is implemented before a large amount of the body's nerve cells have been broken down and can no longer be treated.
"Today we often have many problems in getting the correct diagnosis. For Parkinson's disease, studies show that every fourth patient receives an incorrect diagnosis, and they are a form of Parkinson’s like disease instead," says Professor Lars Forsgren.
People who suffer from severe diseases mainly ask the questions: What do I have?, What is going to happen?, and, What can you do about it?
"Thanks to this grant, our chances are very good that in the near future we’ll be more able to answer these questions," says Professor Stefan Marklund, principal researcher for the application.
The research project titled "Metabolic markers of neurodegenerative diseases" is interdisciplinary. New knowledge will be developed by medicine, biology and chemistry combined with so-called metabolomics.
Metabolomics is usually defined as a "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind." These chemical fingerprints represent the body of small molecules, called metabolites, including amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, hormones and other signalling molecules. The composition of metabolites can be likened to a fingerprint of the health of people. With the help of metabolomics, patterns can be detected that are unique to a specific disease.
With support from the Wallenberg Consortium North (WCN) seven years ago, Umeå became years a national node for the development of metabolomics. Today, Umeå researchers are on the full-scale international research front.
"This grant will be of great importance for the further method development in metabolomics analysis here in Umeå, and will certainly benefit more projects where metabolomics analysis is central at both Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)," says Thomas Moritz, a professor at SLU in Umeå and director of the metabolomics laboratory.
"The project will not only be relevant to various neurological diseases. The development of metabolomics research will also be vital for research on diseases such as asthma and allergies, prostate cancer and infectious diseases," explains Göran Sandberg.
Contact Persons: Professor Stefan Marklund E-mail: stefan.marklund@medbio.umu.se Phone: +46 (0)90-785 12 39 Mobile: +46 (0)70-568 77 03
Professor Lars Nyberg E-mail: Lars.Nyberg@diagrad.umu.se Phone: +46 (0)90-786 64 29 Mobile: +46 (0)70-609 27 75
Professor Lars Forsgren E-mail: lars.forsgren@neuro.umu.se Phone: +46 (0)90-785 16 71 Mobile: +46 (0)70-620 76 26
Professor Thomas Moritz E-mail: Thomas.Moritz@genfys.slu.se Phone: +46 (0)90-786 84 56 Mobile: +46 (0)70-269 06 84
