OMRF Disease Research

Alzheimer's Disease

Cancer

Heart Disease and Stroke

Children's Diseases

Diabetes

Lupus

Life-Saving Innovations

Research Topics

Every 71 seconds, someone develops Alzheimer's Disease

More than 26 million people are already living with Alzheimer’s, and that figure is projected to quadruple by 2050. Halting this epidemic represents perhaps the most daunting health challenge of the 21st century.

OMRF is at the center of this struggle, and its scientists are battling Alzheimer’s on multiple fronts. Led by Dr. Jordan Tang, a team of OMRF researchers identified and cloned the enzyme believed to cause the disease, then created an inhibitor to halt the enzyme’s action. Today, an experimental drug based on those discoveries is progressing through human clinical trials. If those trials prove successful, the new drug, known as CTS-2116, could offer the first effective treatment for Alzheimer’s.

OMRF researchers also have achieved promising results from a pre-clinical study of a potential Alzheimer’s vaccine. And they have uncovered a molecular mechanism that provides important clues why certain people are at higher risk for developing the disease.

Alzheimer’s is a complicated, multi-faceted disease. Through a variety of approaches—drugs, immunization, genetics—OMRF scientists are making progress against an illness that robs too many of their memories, their identities and, ultimately, their lives.