Stowers scientist to lead $28.6 million effort predicting protein changes in neurodegenerative disease

Kansas City, Mo. – Proteins that misfold and clump together are associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, often causing damage before the changes are detectable. A new research effort aims to identify these early-stage protein alterations and use artificial intelligence (AI) to predict their onset.

Randal Halfmann, Ph.D., an investigator at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, has been selected to contribute significantly to this national project. His laboratory will receive approximately $4.1 million over two years from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to generate large-scale experimental data on protein aggregation, which is crucial for training AI models.

The research will focus on intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), which lack a stable structure and are implicated in harmful clumping associated with neurodegenerative conditions. Halfmann's lab will employ a proprietary technology called DAmFRET to measure protein self-assembly within individual living cells. The project plans to collect over ten billion measurements across 50,000 proteins under conditions mimicking cellular aging.

"If we can better predict the probabilities and onset ages of disease, it could allow many more people to seek preventive or early-stage treatments or enroll in clinical trials," Halfmann stated. This initiative seeks to provide deeper insights into the mechanisms driving neurodegenerative diseases and to develop novel therapeutic strategies.