The Mats Paulsson Foundations award Jan Johansson, professor at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, SEK 10 million for research into new innovative treatment methods for Alzheimer’s disease. The aim of the research project is to create a new drug that can achieve a breakthrough in the treatment of the most common dementia disease.
Professor Jan Johansson at the Department of Medicine , Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, has been awarded the grant for his research on new innovative treatment methods for Alzheimer’s disease in the project “Blod-hjärnbarriär permeabelt BRICHOS kopplat till nervtillväxtfaktor – en bimodal behandling av Alzheimers sjukdom” (Blood-brain barrier permeable BRICHOS linked to nerve growth factor – a bimodal treatment for Alzheimer’s disease).
The grant aims to enable a clinical breakthrough in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, writes the Mats Paulsson Foundations in a press release. The aim of the research is to create a new drug.
Jan Johansson talks about the background to the research project.
“The project is completely new and stemmed from an idea to combine effects on Alzheimer’s pathology that we have seen in mouse models of “our” protein BRICHOS, with known effects of nerve growth factor (NGF) in Alzheimer’s patients that our partner in the project, Professor Maria Eriksdotter , has worked on,” he says and continues:
“Without the grant, this new project would not be able to be run as efficiently as we now have the chance to do. We are of course very grateful for this opportunity,” he says.
Jan Johansson summarises the three objectives of the research project.
“One goal is to see how efficiently BRICHOS can transport NGF into the brain, another is to test the function of BRICHOS-NGF in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. A third goal is to test BRICHOS-NGF in patients, which of course assumes that we get positive results from the animal models.”
How do you celebrate the grant from the Mats Paulsson Foundations?
“We came up with the idea of combining BRICHOS and NGF in the champagne bar at Södra Teatern. Now it’s time to go there again,” he concludes.
Dementia is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a common disease. Today, about 160,000 people in Sweden are affected by some form of dementia. The most common of these is Alzheimer’s disease.
The Mats Paulsson Foundations
In honor of entrepreneur Mats Paulsson, who will turn 80 in 2024, the Mats Paulsson Foundations have decided to double this year’s donations to SEK 50 million.
The foundations’ intention is to support research projects in life science, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. In this year’s calls, the foundations have invited to apply for grants of SEK 10 million for a groundbreaking project in Alzheimer’s research.
The Mats Paulsson Foundations is the collective name for the foundations that entrepreneur Mats Paulsson is the initiator of. These include the Mats Paulsson Foundation for Research, Innovation and Spatial Planning and the Stefan Paulsson Cancer Foundation Foundation.
Since the first foundation was established in 2003, a total of just over SEK 238 million has been donated to research.
Source: Mats Paulsson Foundations
