The Reporter: June 1995, Vol.6, No.3
Alzheimer's Center Devoted To Genetics

The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation of Hackensack, N.J., donated funds to P&S in April to establish The Taub Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. The center, directed by Dr. Richard Mayeux, the Gertrude Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Public Health, will supplement efforts under way at the federally funded Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia, which is directed by Dr. Mayeux and Dr. Michael Shelanski, the Delafield Professor of Pathology and chairman of pathology.

The Taub Center will fund three full-time scientists, their assistants, and core laboratories for dedicated research into the genetic epidemiology and molecular biology of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. The foundation's vice president, Marilyn Taub, is a longstanding member of the Department of Psychiatry's advisory board.

Alzheimer's researchers have recently increased efforts to examine genetic aspects of this disease. The Taub Center will help Columbia researchers in this mission by studying the genetic makeup of sibling pairs with Alzheimer's disease and single individuals who have no family history of Alzheimer's.

In basic science, researchers focus on both intracellular and extracellular events related to defective genes that can lead to the loss of memory and personality changes attributed to Alzheimer's disease. Clinical researchers are exploring a variety of environmental factors that could amplify or reduce the probability of developing the disease from a defective gene.

The Taub Center effort joins existing studies at Columbia, including investigations of amyloid metabolism; tau phosphorylation; the role of nerve growth factor in neuronal survival; approaches to blocking cell death; the relation of free radicals to neuronal death; the molecular biology of normal memory; and a large-scale epidemiologic study in the Washington Heights community.