Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease that is the most common form of dementia, affecting approximately 44.4 million individuals worldwide. With shifting demographics, lower birth rates and longer life expectancies resulting in a greater proportion of the elderly, this number is expecting to increase dramatically. The growing prevalence, mortality rates, and medical costs of AD in an aging population present a very real public health concern that makes finding new therapeutic strategies an urgent issue. More than ever translational research is necessary to take what is discovered at the bench and apply it to bedside practices. Unfortunately, a number of drugs that have shown promise in preclinical rodent studies have failed to work in AD patients, suggesting a translational gap between rodent models and human patients. To bridge this gap our laboratory has developed the first non-human primate (NHP) model of AD, which is phylogenetically much closer to humans. Utilizing this novel NHP model of AD, we propose to conduct a preclinical trial using Liraglutide, an anti-diabetic drug, which recent research suggests may be effective in slowing and preventing AD progression. Recent epidemiological studies have found that patients with Type 2 diabetes have elevated AD risk and it has been noted that AD patients have reduced levels of brain insulin and insulin receptors. Using a battery of memory and learning tasks designed to discriminate between healthy aging and AD, we will assess whether Liraglutide protects against AD-mediated cognitive impairments in NHPs. The results from this study have the potential to provide strong evidence that anti-diabetic drugs may be an effective therapeutic for AD patients, something that is desperately needed. Additionally, this study will establish a reliable paradigm for future preclinical NHP studies allowing for accurate and successful translational research, expediting the bench to bedside process.