The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy), in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) and with generous support by AstraZeneca, has awarded a $140,000 challenge grant to Douglas R. Galasko, MD, from the University of California, San Diego, to support his research on protein biomarkers that may indicate synaptic dysfunction and degeneration related to Alzheimer’s disease. “Progress in early diagnosis, monitoring and therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease has been hampered by a lack of short-term, sensitive biomarkers that correlate closely to disease progression and clinical outcomes,” says Dr. Galasko, who is a neurologist and director of the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at University of California, San Diego.