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News — Our grant proprosal is to identify how two protective mechanisms work and then test them in both European and Amerindian APOE4 genes to see if they work in those genetic backgrounds as well as African.  We will do this in cell cultures, using cells from individuals with these protective factors.   It is important to evaluate how these protective mechanisms for APOE4 function in different ancestral genomic backgrounds so they can be applied to all populations with these ancestries.  Indeed, African Americans are genetically admixed with both European and African ancestors, while Hispanics/Latinos in the Americas share three ancestral populations, European, African and Amerindian.  Thus looking at all three of these ancestries in research is important.  Also, African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos are predicted to the fastest rising group of indivdiuals over 65 yr in the US population in the coming years and thus if we are to reduce the burden of AD in the US,  they must be included in research.

We believe that identifying these protective mechanisms will be a major step towards therapy for a large number of AD patients.