Collaborative Research Discovers New Treatments for Alzheimer' Disease

A new multimillion-dollar project will bring together researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine and the IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering as they work to solve one of medical science's greatest needs: Identifying new treatments for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. 

The team will combine new technologies with established chemistry and medical research tactics, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to help discover novel chemical structures that will interact with proteins relevant to Alzheimer's patients. The hope is that AI might replace countless hours of human research, jumpstarting the search for new treatments.

Traditional drug discovery methods cannot efficiently search the enormous chemical space now available to researchers. Our goal is to develop AI-driven tools that can screen billions of compounds and prioritize those most likely to interact with disease-related targets and reach the brain."

Yijie Wang, Associate Professor, Indiana University School of Medicine

This new collaboration will run adjacent to the IU School of Medicine-led TREAT-AD program, which also seeks to find new drug targets for Alzheimer's.

Brent Clayton, PhD, associate research professor of medicine and the Medicinal Chemistry Core Leader in the TREAT-AD program, will lead the chemistry side of this new collaboration. He said the project seeks to tackle an inherently challenging problem. 

"Alzheimer's disease is complex, and there is still ongoing scientific debate about which disease mechanisms are most important at different stages," Clayton said. "That makes selecting the right cellular targets especially difficult. In many areas of medicine, you can focus on simply killing harmful cells or completely halting a specific process, but in neurodegenerative disease the goal is often to restore the delicate biological balance without pushing a pathway too far in either direction."

Even if a promising target is identified, Clayton said, developing drug molecules that can reach the brain in adequate amounts is a difficult process.

While some drugs exist that can mitigate symptoms, there is not yet an approved treatment that stops the underlying disease.

"Despite these obstacles, this work has huge potential rewards," Clayton said. "Alzheimer's affects millions of patients, families and caregivers. It's exciting to be part of a team at a top research university committed to taking on that challenge."

This five-year project is funded by a $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.