CDR: Laboratories For Molecular Neuroscience
Director: Ralph A. Nixon, M.D., Ph.D.

The Laboratories for Molecular Neuroscience are dedicated to understanding the molecular origins of Alzheimer's disease. Special emphasis is placed on the cause of "sporadic" Alzheimer's, the non-familial form which accounts for more than 90% of all cases of the disease. Although it is the most common type, sporadic Alzheimer's is the least well understood. Laboratory scientists have been mainly focusing on proteases - enzymes that digest unwanted or defective proteins or clip larger proteins into smaller ones with diverse cellular functions. Ralph Nixon, MD, PhD, the director of these laboratories, was the first to call attention to the importance of proteases in Alzheimer's disease and, in 1978, received the first grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate their roles. Today, proteases are considered key factors in virtually every aspect of Alzheimer's, including the formation of ß-amyloid and the death of brain cells. Protease inhibitors are being developed by pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms worldwide as one of the most promising therapies for Alzheimer's disease. Recent studies in the labs of Anne Cataldo, PhD and Paul Mathews, PhD have shown that certain proteases begin to go awry years before the clinical symptoms of disease appear and even before the brain displays other evidence of disease. Accurate laboratory models of the protease disturbances discovered in patients with Alzheimer's are now being developed in the Laboratories for Molecular Neuroscience to identify more effective drug therapies.