The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) launched the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge with the goal to identify male/female differences in the pathogenesis and presentation of Alzheimer’s disease. The objective of this Challenge was to generate novel hypotheses addressing the causes and consequences of such differences.
The recipients of the Geoffrey Beene Challenge were announced on November 7th at the New York Academy of Sciences Alzheimer’s Disease Summit. The first place winner was Enrico Glaab, Ph.D., whose research will focus on age-related gender differences in brain expression levels of tau-interacting ubiquitin-specific peptidase 9, and its possible implications for Alzheimer’s disease. The second place winners were Dr. Kimberly Glass and Dr. John Quackenbush. Their research will study the sex-specific differences in Alzheimer’s disease, characterized by alterations in cellular network structure.