San Diego

The National Institute on Aging awarded $3.3 million to UC San Diego to search for drugs to combat Alzheimer’s disease.

The grant represented the second one in the week for UCSD’s Medical School for Alzheimer’s research. On Monday, officials announced an $18-million NIA grant to set up a national consortium of 30 centers that will also test Alzheimer’s drugs.

Fred Gage, professor of neurosciences, will lead the five-year, $3.3-million study announced Tuesday, which will seek to develop genetic therapies that might one day halt the progress of Alzheimer’s.

“We will be evaluating two treatment strategies--preventing vulnerable brain cells from dying and replenishing neuro-transmitters (chemicals that carry signals in the brain), which are depleted in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” Gage said.

The two NIA grants were made possible by a special congressional appropriation last year. Congress increased Alzheimer’s research funds from $148 million in 1990 to $229 million in 1991.

“The NIA’s goal, by the end of the decade, is to delay substantially the onset of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Gene D. Cohen, acting director of NIA. “If we delay the onset by just five years, we can alleviate a great deal of suffering--and we can cut health care costs significantly, by about $40 billion.”