Cláudia Almeida, group leader of Neuronal Trafficking in Aging Lab, won the Maratona da Saúde Prize in the field of Neurodegenerative Diseases. The award ceremony took place on March 16 at Auditorium Professor Doctor Manuel Machado Macedo in CEDOC. The Biogen company associated itself with Maratona da Saúde by sponsoring this prize.
This award will help Cláudia and her team to study Alzheimer's Disease more deeply. The late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease represents the most common cause of dementia in the population with more than 65 years old. Currently there is no treatment for this complex disorder especially because the cause of late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease is unknown. The familiar form of this disease is caused by mutations transmitted from generation to generation that lead to an excessive production of beta-amyloid 42. The accumulation and aggregation of beta-amyloid 42, which is a toxic, leads to dysfunctions in neuronal communication. Recently were found some alterations in the genes of patients with Alzheimer that maybe increase the risk to develop this disease. With Maratona da Saúde Prize the research group will study the impact of the variants on the gene CD2AP in the production of beta-amyloid 42. The focus of the work is to understand the importance of the CD2AP gene in Alzheimer’s Disease and discover if it can be a possible therapeutically target.
Rodrigo Cunha from the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of University of Coimbra also won the Maratona da Saúde Prize.
The press release can be found in the News Section here.