Earlier this month, the National Institute of Health awarded a $14 million grant to Tulane University’s Brain Institute to study why heart disease, hypertension, and Type 2 diabetes seem to prevent the medicinal benefits of estrogen therapy, as per a press release from Tulane University.

Established in 2016, Tulane’s Brain Institute is an academic multidisciplinary organization that aims to coordinate and elevate neuroscience across Tulane University’s campus. Jill Daniel, the principal investigator of estrogen study and the director of the Tulane Brain Institute, commented on receiving the grant in saying: The Brain Institute was created to support the kind of collaborative, boundary-crossing research that is needed to answer big questions about the brain and brain disorders. This grant will allow us to do just that.”

The $14 million grant awarded by the NIH’s National Institute on Aging will be used by Jill Daniel, the Gary P. Dohanich Professor in Brain Science and professor of psychology to lead a team, composed of scientists from the Tulane University schools of Science and Engineering, Medicine, and Public Health and Tropical Medicine. The team of scientists will also be made up of scientists from the LSU Health Sciences Center as well as the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.

The team will embark on a five-year study to determine why and under what specific conditions estrogen therapy can increase or decrease the risk for developing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Estrogen therapy can help to protect women against age-related cognitive decline, but decades of laboratory research have found that women who take estrogen therapy after menopause don’t see the expected delay or decrease in the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Daniel said of the phenomenon, “in the lab, estrogens are neuroprotective and enhance memory, yet in women, effects of menopausal estrogen therapy on aging brains can range from beneficial to detrimental. We hypothesize that cardiovascular and metabolic disease alter the neuroprotective effects of estrogens. This comprehensive research program will determine mechanisms by which a healthy brain responds differently to estrogens as compared to an unhealthy one and identify conditions under which estrogen administration will or will not prevent or delay age-related cognitive disease.”

The National Institute of Health’s $14 million Program Project Grant (PPG) will include four interrelated research projects with each project’s research investigator focusing on areas such as the impact of hypertension and a high-fat diet on the ability of estrogen to affect the aging female brain as well as the impact of estrogen on vascular health and cognitive aging.

One of the aspects of the research project that is considered to be essential in achieving the program’s overall objective is found in what each lead investigator brings to the table, as each will surely lend their “distinct yet complementary area of expertise to the PPG.” The lead investigators of the Tulane Brain Institute’s Program Project Grant (PPG) team are associate professors of pharmacology Sarah Lindsey and Ricardo Mostany, associate professor of cell and molecular biology Laura Schrader, and associate professor of physiology Andrea Zsombok.

As outlined by Jill Daniel, there is enough preliminary evidence to suggest that postmenopausal women taking some form of estrogen therapy could be at increased risk of cognitive disease if they have a pre-existing condition such as Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. It’s one of the goals of the overall project to determine if and how postmenopausal estrogen therapy interacts interact with cardiovascular and metabolic health to impact the brain and cognitive aging.

Daniel announced that the team will “hypothesize that cardiovascular and metabolic disease alter the neuroprotective effects of estrogens. This comprehensive research program will determine mechanisms by which a healthy brain responds differently to estrogens as compared to an unhealthy one and identify conditions under which estrogen administration will or will not prevent or delay age-related cognitive disease.”

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