Five teams of Alzheimer’s disease researchers will receive a total of $7 million over three years from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the organization has announced.

“We know that these kinds of creative, cutting-edge projects will produce new diagnostics, treatments or even cures for this devastating disease,” Tom Skalak, Ph.D., executive director for science and technology for the foundation, said in a statement.

The projects will investigate novel and budding areas of research in Alzheimer’s, including the role of gene combinations, white matter damage, pH and a recently described brain-wide clearance system, while also developing new methods and tools to study basic processes and identify new treatments.

The grant recipients:

• Ragnhildur Thora Karadottir, University of Cambridge ($1.3 million)

• Jeff Iliff and William Rooney, Oregon Health and Science University ($1.4 million)

• Fred “Rusty” Gage, Salk Institute ($1.5 million)

• Aimee Kao, University of California, San Francisco ($1.3 million)

• Michael Keiser, Martin Kampmann and David Kokel, University of California, San Francisco ($1.4 million)

In a separate announcement made in conjunction with the Alzheimer’s Association, the foundation revealed recipients of three Alzheimer’s research grants totaling $500,000. The funding will be used to study the role of the immune system in Alzheimer’s disease.

Recipients:

• Sally Ann Frautschy, University of California, Los Angeles ($300,000)

• Claudia Balducci, Pharmacological Research Institute Mario Negri ($100,000)

• Jonas J. Neher, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research ($100,000)