NZ scholar probes Alzheimer's puzzle

By SIMON COLLINS

Research by a young New Zealand scholar is seeking new answers about why some old people get Alzheimer's disease and others don't.

Wendy Brooks, who is doing research for a doctorate at Britain's Cambridge University, was named this week as the winner of the top scholarship prize awarded by New Zealand's Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.

The prize, open to all scholars and fellowship holders financed by the foundation, provides a trip to the United States in September to spend time with US science media.

Otago University biochemistry professor Warren Tate, who co-supervised Ms Brooks' masters thesis, said scientists were gradually understanding more about why 47 per cent of people aged over 85 get Alzheimer's disease and the rest do not.

They had found that the disease was associated with a small fragment of a brain protein that influences memory.

The mystery is why some people are more susceptible than others.

Trials of a drug which appeared to immunise people against the disease had to be abandoned when two patients developed major health problems.

Ms Brooks grew up in Renwick, Marlborough, and started studying for a Bachelor of Arts in psychology at Massey University.

She switched to a science degree when she realised she was more interested in researching the biological basis of brain disorders, and moved to Otago for her masters degree.

She won a Bright Futures scholarship to Cambridge in 2000, and is now at Cambridge's human genome mapping project resource centre.