Researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Innovation in Brain were awarded a $2.7 million MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to continue work on the impact of estrogen as a master regulator of the brain’s bioenergetic system, which promotes glucose transport and metabolism and energy generation.

The aging transition of menopause, unique to women, is a process that dismantles both reproductive ability and, potentially, the bioenergetic capacity in the brain. Understanding how estrogen acts to promote and sustain the brain’s energy-producing system is critical to revealing changes that can increase the risk of age-associated neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease in postmenopausal women.

"From a discovery perspective, this research is unique in exploring the mechanisms underlying nuclear and mitochondrial gene expression in the aging female brain,” said Roberta Diaz Brinton, director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science, Regents Professor and principal investigator on the grant. “By determining the mechanisms underlying the systematic dismantling of the bioenergetic system, we have the potential to inform clinical interventions to prevent or delay loss of estrogenic control and better understand patterns of how the brain ages.”