Effort intensifies to identify novel mechanisms and targets for future Alzheimer’s therapeutics A new grant from the National Institute On Aging at the National Institutes of Health will support ongoing research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to address Alzheimer’s disease caused by gene mutations. According to Chunyu Wang, the principal investigator and an assistant professor of biological sciences at Rensselaer, the project seeks to understand and counter the mechanism that produces Amyloid-Beta 42 peptide in brain cells. “A key pathology in Alzheimer’s is accumulation of senile plaque in the brain, which is mainly composed of the Amyloid Beta-42 peptide,” said Wang, who is a member of the Rensselaer Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. “This grant supports research into an enzyme that is responsible for producing the toxic peptide using single molecule techniques, and may identify novel mechanisms and targets for future Alzheimer’s therapeutics.”