A recent $6.55 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to Loma Linda University School of Medicine’s Neurosurgery Center for Research, Training and Education will provide means for research into a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

The disease, which researchers call “deadly,” is the eighth-leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers at LLU School of Medicine believe there is a cure for AD, but they must first determine what causes the disease. The research team plans to develop a diagnostic tool for early diagnosis of AD.

Commercially available screening tests for Alzheimer’s may not be too far away, researchers believe. Initial screening clinics, part of a five-year study sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association, has already begun and will ultimately include 100 healthy seniors 50 years of age and older who live in southern California.

“My feeling is that other researchers are going to get into this,” says Cindy Dickson, administrator for LLU School of Medicine. “I think that there’s going to be a spin-off research. They’re going to see something that might attract them to what we’re doing here.”

“I am excited about the project because of its comprehensive design,” says Lora Green, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and the radiobiology program at LLU School of Medicine. “And even if all of our goals are not met, we will have made significant roads into better understanding the biological processes of Alzheimer’s disease and thereby improving the diagnostic options and potential for earlier therapeutic intervention.”

Loma Linda University Medical Center, established by the Adventist Church in 1905, is internationally renowned for its medical research and treatments in areas such as heart transplant surgery and non-invasive proton beam therapy for prostate and breast cancer.