Transfer of Dementia Australia Scholarship - India Boyton "Cage vs Age": Development of an innovative nanotechnology to halt the spread of hyperphosphorylated Tau protein in Alzheimer's Disease

Project Member(s): Care, A.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Dementia Australia Research Foundation Ltd
Dementia Australia Research Foundation Ltd

Start year: 2021

Summary: Dementia affects 50 million people worldwide with a staggering 10 million new cases diagnosed each year. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, accounting for 60-70% of all cases. Current AD medications only alleviate symptoms and do not modify the underlying mechanisms that cause the disease. Consequently, finding an effective therapeutic for AD is of critical importance. One major contributor to the spread of AD within the brain is the transmission of abnormal forms of a protein called tau. In this process, abnormal tau is released from diseased brain cells and taken up by neighbouring healthy brain cells, triggering the misfolding of the normal tau inside those cells. Thus, AD progressively spreads throughout the brain. My PhD project aims to engineer a novel nanotechnology that can target and capture abnormal tau as it moves between brain cells, preventing its transmission and the spread of AD inside the brain. If successful, this frontier research will provide a disease-modifying treatment that would be of significant benefit to the millions of individuals with AD.

FOR Codes: Health, Synthetic Biology, Neurosciences not elsewhere classified, Biological psychology , Neurosciences, Biochemistry and cell biology

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.