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ACCEL research leads investigator to Alzheimer’s Association grant

“Thanks to the work funded by my DE ACCEL CTR grant, I submitted and won a new research grant from the Alzheimer’s Association that will extend my studies on resolution biology in the brain. The Alzheimer’s Association awards about 40 of these grants each year all over the world (international competition) so it has become a very competitive grant mechanism.”

Eric Hamlett, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Medical University of South Carolina

In 2021, Hamlett received a Delaware Clinical and Translational Research ACCEL Program Pilot Grant for researching “Mechanisms of Resolution Reprogramming in Alzheimer’s Disease Inflammation.”

The objective of the research, according to his proposal, was to determine how RvE1 alters cellular responses in different innate immune cell culture models (monocytes and microglia) challenged with amyloid-beta and tau oligomer activation. The investigation used next-generation sequencing, immunofluorescence imaging and targeted manipulations of 3 signaling pathways to comprehensively study the mechanisms of resolution reprogramming in these cells. Hamlett’s hypothesis was that RvE1 may attenuate the activation of innate immune cells by suppressing canonical NF-kappaB activation through a mechanism partly dependent upon PPAR-gamma activation.

In furthering his ACCEL research, Hamlett was awarded an Alzheimer’s Association Research Grant (AARG) in 2022.

The AARG program aims to fund early-career investigators who are less than 18 years past their doctoral degree or post-residency with funding that will allow them to develop preliminary or pilot data, to test procedures and to develop hypotheses.