First Round of ASU-Mayo Clinic Seed Grants to Tackle Today's Toughest Afflictions

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Media Contacts:

Michael Yardley
Mayo Clinic
480-301-4222

Skip Derra
ASU
480-965-4823

TEMPE, Ariz. — Arizona State University (ASU) and Mayo Clinic are teaming up to fund five ambitious projects that will tackle several of today's most challenging human diseases and afflictions.

The projects funded will work to:

• develop an early diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease;
• better understand the aging process and several human diseases at the molecular level;
• develop a quantitative assessment of recovery of hand functions after surgery and physical rehabilitation for carpal tunnel syndrome;
• improve the effectiveness of Parkinson's disease treatment; and
• assess the effects of air pollution on healthy individuals and those with lung disease.

"This seed funding will allow teams of researchers to explore new and exciting medical areas or technologies that exist outside of typical medical research," said ASU President Michael Crow. "With this round of seed funding, we have identified five projects that have important societal implications, and each project team has specific combined strengths in medical research and clinical sciences that make them particularly well suited to tackle these important problems."

"This important collaboration with our partners at ASU allows us to draw on our collective expertise to ultimately support the care we provide to patients," said Victor F. Trastek, M.D., chair, Mayo Clinic Board of Governors. "In turn, we join forces to strengthen health care here in the Valley and throughout Arizona."

Each project is geared toward a specific medical condition or problem. Here are brief sketches of the projects and what they are designed to accomplish.

Alzheimer's disease afflicts 10 percent of the population over age 65 and 30 percent of population over age of 85, yet there is no simple test (like a blood test) to detect it, nor does it have a cure. Michael Sierks, a professor of chemical and materials engineering in ASU's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering is teaming up with Drs. Richard Caselli, Neurology, and Todd Golde, Neuroscience, at Mayo Clinic to develop an early diagnostic test and therapeutic treatment strategy for Alzheimer's. The team will study the level of beta-amyloid protein, which is found in abundance in the form of plaques inside the brains of Alzheimer's' patients. The researchers will take samples from healthy patients and patients with Alzheimer's and try to identify differences in protein profiles between healthy people and Alzheimer's sufferers. They also will work on therapeutic antibodies to the beta-amyloid protein to identify treatment strategies to prevent or slow the progression of Alzheimer's.

In trying to understand the aging process and a variety of human diseases including cancers, scientists have begun to focus on telomerase, a key enzyme that prevents the erosion of terminal regions on chromosomes called telomeres, which in turn control how long cells live. Telomerase is hard to study because it normally only exists and acts inside living cells, where it is difficult to observe and manipulate. Julian Chen, an assistant professor in chemistry and biochemistry at ASU will work with Dr. David F. Smith, Department of Biochemistry at Mayo Clinic, to develop a system where the enzyme can be created and manipulated outside of the cell. If successfully developed, the technique could allow numerous experiments to be performed on the enzyme, which could in turn provide major insights into the aging process and diseases associated with it.

Carpal tunnel syndrome decreases tactile sensitivity of the thumb, index finger and middle finger, but the extent to which CTS affects the ability to grasp objects and use tools remains controversial. The team of Marco Santello, ASU's Dept. of Kinesiology and Drs. Scott Duncan and Anthony Smith, both of the Dept. of Orthopedic Surgery at Mayo Clinic, will develop analytical approaches that will measure a person's ability to grasp objects (and perform other menial tasks) rather than just relying on diagnostic tests that measure nerve response to an electrical impulse. "Our hope is to offer more insight to surgeons and physical therapists, and at the same time provide information about the general picture of how the central nervous system integrates sensory information with motor control," Santello said.

Jiping He, director of the Center for Neural Interface Design at ASU's Biodesign Institute, will team up with Stephen Helms Tillery (Biodesign Institute) and Dr. Virgilio Evidente, Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic, to improve the effectiveness of Parkinson's disease treatment. One of the most widely used surgical strategies for Parkinson's is deep brain stimulation (DBS), which sends electrical impulses through an electrode implanted in brain tissue, but the exact mechanisms of how it mitigates the tremors and other symptoms associated with the disease is not clear. The team will employ a new type of electrode with the goal of improving critical outcomes and bettering the current understanding of DBS.

Air pollution has been linked to major lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Jim Anderson, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering in ASU's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, in collaboration with Richard Hervig, an ASU professor of geological sciences, and Dr. Lewis Wesselius, Department of Pulmonary Medicine at Mayo Clinic, will measure the metal content of air pollutants in the Phoenix metropolitan area in a study of healthy volunteers and those with COPD. The team will measure and evaluate the levels and types of air pollutants present in the lungs of Phoenix residents to determine whether they add to the burden of lung disease.

The projects are supported through a joint ASU-Mayo seed-grant fund, established as part of a broader agreement between the two institutions to collaborate on medical research and education. The $200,000 for the first round of grants support interdisciplinary and translational research projects that are collaborative efforts between ASU and Mayo Clinic scientists.

Mayo Clinic is a private group practice of medicine dedicated to providing diagnosis and treatment of patient illnesses through a systematic focus on individual patient needs. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 202-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

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