01 Nov 2013

When it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, women bear the brunt of the risk. That fact spurred this year’s Geoffrey Beene NeuroDiscovery Challenge, an annual contest to encourage promising research that addresses a particular topic in neuroscience (see April 2013 news story). On November 7, judges will choose a winner for the 2013 prize, the $50,000 21st Century BrainTrust(™) Innovations Award. Which of the three finalists has submitted the best project proposal? Alzforum readers can help decide by voting for their choice before November 5.

Enrico Glaab, University of Luxembourg, proposes probing the functions of USP9Y, a protein encoded on the Y chromosome that may protect against AD. USP9Y interacts with tau, the principal component of the neurofibrillary tangles that form in Alzheimer’s. Glaab intends to test how zebrafish and mice respond to a loss of the protein. Hervé Rhinn and Asa Abeliovich, Columbia University, New York, think women’s susceptibility to Alzheimer’s lies in gender-specific gene expression of the cholesterol-related cell-surface receptor SCARB1. The prize would help them find biomarkers associated with SCARB1 levels in the brain, work out disease-relevant molecular pathways it may influence, and explore anew the possibility that cholesterol-reducing drugs could reduce AD risk in women. Kimberley Glass and John Quackenbush, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, plan to compare transcriptomes of healthy men and women with those of men and women with AD, to find out if gene networks are differentially activated in a gender-specific way in the disease. Their preliminary findings point to differences in energy metabolism that are due to transcription factors controlled by sex hormones.

Alzforum readers can review the researchers’ profiles and proposals, then vote. Added to their online tallies will be the results of a live vote to be held November 7 at the New York Academy of Sciences during the Alzheimer’s Disease Summit: The Path to 2025. The winning project will be announced at the meeting.—Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib