By Jeff Green
A lucrative faculty award is empowering a Memorial researcher to better understand and potentially find a cure for the world's most common neurodegenerative disease.
Dr. Matthew Parsons is this year's recipient of the Terra Nova Young Innovator Award (TNYIA), which recognizes and supports outstanding young faculty members whose research is particularly innovative and whose specific proposal has real potential to make a significant impact on society.
The award is supported through $50,000 in funding from Suncor Energy, on behalf of the partners in the Terra Nova oil field.
Pioneering research
Dr. Parsons is an emerging researcher in the Faculty of Medicine where he is assistant professor of biomedical sciences (neurosciences). He is leading a pioneering research study aimed at understanding how a healthy brain works and what goes wrong in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, which affects one in nine people over the age of 65. Currently, there is no known cure for the disease.
"We want to understand precisely what happens to brain cells in the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease, before the cells begin to die," said Dr. Parsons. "We hope that our work will identify novel targets for drugs treatments that will bring us closer to successfully delaying, or even preventing, the symptoms associated with this devastating disease.
"This award is a tremendous motivator for us to continue to work hard every day to help better understand neurodegenerative disease."
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