Southwest Research Institute has received funding from the Medical CBRN Defense Consortium (MCDC) administered by Advanced Technology International to develop a nerve agent antidote for emergency use on the battlefield or to protect public health.

Leaders of the newly-established San Antonio Partnership for Precision Therapeutics (SA PPT) have awarded the partnership’s first research grant. A seven-person team researching sepsis-induced organ failure will receive $200,000 in funding over two years. The award’s purpose is to advance research and breakthroughs in precision therapeutics, which is the development of drug therapies for specific populations based on genetics, lifestyle and environment.

Presidents of San Antonio’s four largest research institutions today announced they are providing $800,000, collectively, for a major initiative in precision therapeutics. The process of precision therapeutics ultimately leads to breakthrough treatments that can be individualized to specific patient populations.

Aging is the greatest known risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia inolder individuals. However, effective AD therapies remain elusive, which underscores the need to betterunderstand disease etiology and its co-occurrence with advanced age. The apolipoprotein E4 (apoE4) allele isthe strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset AD and it is associated with decreased lifespan. The apoEprotein is crucial to lipid homeostasis through its regulation of cholesterol, triglyceride and phospholipidmetabolism in the blood and the brain.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease affecting millions of Americans.Neurons have a large amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids in membrane phospholipids that are vulnerable toattack by reactive oxygen species to result in lipid peroxidation. Lipid peroxidation is increased in AD brains andis believed to play a key role in driving neurodegeneration of AD. However, supplementation of lipid solubleantioxidants yields only mixed results in clinical trials. So the importance of lipid peroxidation in AD remainsunproven.

While the etiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is multifactorial and complex, results from epidemiological,clinical, and laboratory animal studies implicate traumatic brain injury (TBI) as an important risk factor for ADand dementia. However, the mechanisms by which TBI increases the risk of AD are largely unknown.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly and a majority of AD cases issporadic without known causes. While the etiology of AD is multifactorial and complex, growing evidencesuggests that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a risk factor for development of AD and dementia. Repetitive TBIcauses chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Pathological TDP-43 inclusions are one of the important hallmarks of neuropathology in CTE.