Two Eastern professors and two students are collaborating on research that may lead to the discovery of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive and irreversible form of dementia that affects the lives of several million people across the globe.

The disease involves degeneration in the brain that starts with memory loss and can lead to infection and death.

Britto Nathan and Michael Menze, biological sciences professors, along with William Fernandez and Lena Elmuti, junior biological sciences majors, have been working on research together since the beginning of May.

“If we are able to find a compound that is mitochondria-specific to creating estrogen, then the benefit could be treating Alzheimer’s disease or actually being able to prevent it,” Menze said.

He said they think that during the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, the central energy-producing part in one’s cell, called the mitochondria, malfunctions.

“We also know that estrogen, the female sex hormone, seems to protect somewhat against Alzheimer’s disease and we suspect that it does it by improving the function of the power plant of the cell that generates the energy for the cell,” Menze said.

Elmuti said they have been removing ovaries, which produce estrogen, from female mice and seeing how the cells are impacted by how the mitochondria respond. Then they injected the mice with estrogen and tested if the energy function of the mitochondria improves.

“We are in the starting stage but, so far, it has shown that if you take the ovaries, the mitochondria’s ability to produce energy goes down and if you give them the sex hormone injection then the mitochondria start producing more energy,” Nathan said.

He said their goal is to find a chemical that increases energy production in the brain that does not affect one’s body.

“We cannot just give estrogen because it controls the whole female biology and messes with reproduction,” Nathan said. “We are looking to boost energy production with something that is similar to estrogen but not exactly estrogen because it affects your body.”

Fernandez said he and Elmuti won an Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity award from the Honors College for $3,000.

Nathan and Menze won the Dean’s Award for the 2011 Summer Research and Creative Activity grant for about $4,000.

“What I like the most about this particular project is training students to become future scientists and the synergy between my expertise in brain biology and Michael’s expertise in mitochondrial energy,” Nathan said. “This is what happens when two different faculty with two very different interests come together and students get to have exposure to both.”

He said if they discover the chemical they are looking for, then the benefit could be enormous to not only Alzheimer’s disease, but other aspects as well that occur from lack of energy production in the brain.

“I believe this could be the Holy Grail to not only preventing neural degenerative diseases, but could even function in the brain to help regulate estrogen to stop menopause,” Nathan said.

Rachel Rodgers can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].