Alberto Costa, MD, PhD, clinical professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, received a new five-year, $3.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health.
The award will fund two clinical trials testing the safety and efficacy of higher-than-recommended doses of the Alzheimer’s disease drug memantine in young adults with Down syndrome.
The project is the next stage of a translational research effort that began in Costa’s lab 18 years ago and later led to pilot and phase 2 clinical studies of memantine in people with Down syndrome.
The new study is funded through the NIH UG3/UH3 mechanism. In the UG3 phase, Costa will collaborate with Stephen Ruedrich, MD, at University Hospitals and Katherine Koenig, PhD, at Cleveland Clinic. The UH3 phase will also include a collaboration with a research team led by Brian Chicoine, MD, at Advocate Medical Group Adult Down Syndrome Center in Park Ridge, Illinois.
