U.S. News and World Report reported on April 10 that Dr. Terrence Town had successfully created a transgenic rat model of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Dr. Town and his team genetically altered the rats to cause them to develop the same “specific pathologies” that human AD patients do. With this rat model, researchers will have a better shot of correctly identifying compounds and treatments that may one day be used to prevent or cure AD in humans. Dr. Town is a professor in the physiology and biophysics department at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. In 2011, Dr. Town received a Julie Martin Mid-Career Awards in Aging Research from AFAR. Read more about the causes of and latest research on AD at the Infoaging Alzheimer’s Disease Center.
