This World Alzheimer’s Month, we’re highlighting the researchers working to understand what causes Alzheimer’s disease – and find new ways to tackle it.
Meet Dr Francesca Alves, who is investigating a fundamental but often overlooked problem: the loss of energy production in brain cells.
For her, the motivation is personal. Growing up she was especially close to her grandfather. They would play games together in the garden, including hide and seek with her soft toys. But as he developed dementia, she noticed that he began to forget where he had hidden them.
That experience stayed with Francesca and helped shape her passion for ageing-related research.
Brain cells need energy to function and survive. Growing evidence suggests that disrupted energy production may contribute to the damage and degeneration seen in Alzheimer’s disease. But researchers currently have no way to directly measure this process in a living brain, and no treatments specifically designed to restore energy at the cellular level.
Dr Alves is taking a three-stage approach:
First, she will develop a new brain imaging tool to measure energy production more accurately, helping researchers understand Alzheimer’s disease and identify people who could benefit from future treatments.
Next, she will investigate how low energy levels contribute to brain cell degeneration, using a new laboratory model of Alzheimer’s disease.
Finally, she will design and test potential therapies that deliver energy directly to vulnerable brain cells.
If successful, this research could open new avenues for earlier detection, improve our understanding of how Alzheimer’s progresses and lead to treatments that target brain cell degeneration in a completely new way.
The Race Against Dementia – Dementia Australia Research Foundation Fellowship is giving Francesca the time and resources to pursue a big idea, developing new approaches that could otherwise be difficult to progress through traditional funding.
“I want to stay in the research, stay testing ideas, generating novel hypotheses,” she says.
This World Alzheimer’s Month, we’re proud to support researchers like Francesca who are exploring new ways to understand one of the biggest challenges in dementia research.