£2 Million Wellcome Discovery Award for dementia research

A Cardiff researcher has received a £2.1 million award to help uncover the causes of dementia through pioneering research that uses fruit flies to study how cells produce and use energy.

Dr Gaynor Smith, a Reader from the UK Dementia Research Institute (UKDRI) at Cardiff University, has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Discovery Award to support a new research project into how mitochondria - tiny energy-producing structures within cells - are genetically regulated in brain cells.

The research will improve understanding of processes that could provide important new insights into neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Dr  Smith said: “Neurons require a constant supply of energy to function effectively. This energy is largely generated by mitochondria, which are highly dynamic structures that continually move throughout cells, change shape, divide and fuse with one another to meet the demands of healthy brain function.

“When these processes become disrupted, neurons can be damaged and lose their ability to function properly. Mitochondrial dysfunction is increasingly recognised as a key feature of several neurodegenerative diseases, yet many of the genes and molecular pathways responsible for controlling mitochondrial behaviour remain poorly understood.”

Dr Smith's research will investigate how the brain's cells stay healthy and what happens when the systems that power them stop working properly.

Using  fruit flies, the project will t identify the genes that control mitochondrial dynamics and what keeps them healthy.

Through genetic testing, the research aims to map mitochondrial behaviour across different parts of nerve cells. The team hope to translate these findings into  models that can be used to explore neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease.

“By understanding how these processes are regulated, and how they become disrupted in disease, we hope to generate new insights into the mechanisms that drive neurodegeneration and identify promising directions for future therapeutic development.”