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Press Release
VA Scientist Wins Neurology's 'Nobel Prize' for Alzheimer's Research
March 30, 2006
Karen H. Ashe, MD, PhD, a physician and neuroscientist at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Minnesota, is one of three recipients of the 2006 Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology.
The award, to be given April 4 at the group's annual meeting in San Diego, recognizes outstanding advances in the understanding of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. It carries a cash award of $100,000—to be shared by the winners—and is often called the "Nobel Prize of Neurology."
Ashe, an investigator at the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the Minneapolis VA, has conducted extensive animal studies on factors in the brain that cause memory loss. Some of her recent findings raise the hope of earlier diagnosis and potential new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, which affects more than four million Americans.
In a March 2006 article in the journal Nature, she and her colleagues reported on a newly identified protein derivative that appears to disrupt memory, independent of the loss of neurons or the build-up of amyloid-beta protein in the brain. The researchers isolated the compound—called A-beta *56 (A-beta star 56)—from the brains of aging mice that had just begun to show mild memory loss, and injected it into the brains of young rats. Rats treated with the compound were unable to remember the location of a certain object, unlike rats that had not received A-beta *56.
The newly identified compound, which has been found in human brains, could become the target of early-detection tests or drugs that would block its action.
The Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick's, Alzheimer's and Related Diseases is named for Luba Potamkin, a prominent New York woman who was diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer's disease—later determined to be Pick's disease—in the mid-1980s, and who died in 1994. During the 1970s, she was a well-known television spokeswoman for the family's chain of car dealerships.
Ashe's Minneapolis-based GRECC is part of a nationwide network of such centers sponsored by VA, spearheading VA's research on Alzheimer's and related diseases, as well as many other health issues affecting aging veterans. The centers are part of VA's overall health-research program on behalf of veterans. In addition to Ashe's role with VA, she is an Edmund Wallace and Anne Marie Tulloch Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota.
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