The largest grant ever provided by the Alzheimer’s Association has been given to Reisa Sperling, MD, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, to fund its Longitudinal Evaluation of Amyloid Risk and Neurodegeneration (LEARN) study.

The Alzheimer’s Association announced earlier this month that the $8 million award would support four years of research involved in the LEARN Alzheimer’s studies. The LEARN study is an offshoot of the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease (A4) trial. Sperling, one of the lead researchers in the trial, also directs the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“The Alzheimer's Association's goal with this award, with our colleagues at A4, is to jump-start the development of new detection methods, treatments and prevention strategies for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias,” said Maria Carrillo, PhD, Alzheimer's Association vice president of medical and scientific relations, in a release. “These groundbreaking studies may help us distinguish people with normal cognition in the general population who are at highest risk to eventually develop Alzheimer's, and identify treatments – and when best to administer them - to slow or prevent this terrible disease.

The grant was made possible by a donation from a private family foundation in the association’s Zenith Society involved in the biggest gifts afforded for Alzheimer's research.

“With this $8 million venture, the Alzheimer's Association is continuing our leadership and leveraging a unique opportunity to build an expansion study onto the clinical infrastructure of the A4 Study and magnify the impact of our investment, and A4's,” added Carrillo. “For example, we may eventually be able to develop Alzheimer's risk profiles – similar to the Framingham Heart Risk profiles – to help determine if and under what circumstances early screening may be appropriate.”