Governor announces first ‘Right to Worship’ grants

LITTLE ROCK — Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Public Safety announced today that six faith organizations will receive Right to Worship Grants to enhance security. There was previously no avenue to provide aid for those at high risk for a terrorist attack, therefore the Governor and her staff worked with Arkansas State Police and the legislature to address that.

The DPS Right to Worship Safely Grant Program (RTWSGP) supports physical security enhancement and other security activity projects that serve to assist nonprofit ideologybased/ spiritual/religious entities in the prevention, protection against, preparedness for, and response to terrorist threat(s) and/or other extremist attack( s). “The right to worship freely is our most fundamental right,” said Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “With threats against religious communities rising across the country, we created the Right to Worship grant program for faith groups in need of protection. No person or community should ever be violently targeted for their faith. The recipients we are announcing today demonstrated the highest need for support, and I’m proud my administration is stepping up to help.”

DPS Secretary Colonel Mike Hagar added, “The Department of Public Safety’s mission is to ensure the safety and security of all Arkansans. While Arkansans are worshiping, they should not fear for their safety.”

2024 Arkansas Right to Worship Safely Grant Awardees

• Congregation Agudath Achim: $43,200

• Congregation B'nai Israel: $74,449

• Congregation House of Israel: $11,273

• Lubavitch of Arkansas: $60,000

• St. Mary’s Catholic Church Hot Springs: $8,065

• Subiaco Abbey: $30,805 Thirty-one entities applied for the grants, requesting a total of $2,139,421. Organizations did not receive grants unless they met all grant program requirements. Eligible nonprofit ideology-based/spiritual/religious institution/organization were required to be: (1) Designated as a 501(c)3 organization; and (2) received an active terrorist threat(s) and/or extremist attack(s) in the past twelve months; and (3) established risk to the organization (Threat, Vulnerability, and Consequence); Applicants must also be located within the state of Arkansas. Threats were verified and evaluated by the Arkansas State Police for credibility and applications were reviewed by the RTWS Committee.

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LITTLE ROCK — A potential new drug to prevent Alzheimer’s disease in those with the so-called Alzheimer’s gene has been discovered by a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences research team led by Dr. Sue Griffin.

The findings were published Jan. 8 in Communications Biology and include discoveries of a druggable target and a drug candidate, made by Dr.

Meenakshisundaram Balasubramaniam, the paper’s first author.

An estimated 50 to 65 percent of those with Alzheimer’s disease have inherited the Alzheimer’s gene, Apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4), from one or both parents. About 25 percent of people have one copy of APOE4 and are three times as likely to develop the disease. Those with two copies (one from each parent) make up 2 to 3 percent of the population and are 12 to 15 times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

Griffin said her team appears to be the first with the new drug-related discoveries just as it was first in 2018 to show how APOE4 prevented brain cells from disposing of their waste products, known as lysosomal autophagy. Such disruption of autophagy in those who inherit APOE4 is responsible for the formation of plaques and tangles in the brain that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.

That groundbreaking discovery was published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

“Our series of discoveries related to [APOE4] and its detrimental role in Alzheimer’s pathogenesis are among the most impactful of my 50 years as a

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as a research scientist,” said Griffin, a pioneer in the study of neuroinflammation and cofounder of the Journal of Neuroinflammation, based at the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging in Little rock. “No other research team has found a potential drug specifically for blocking the harmful effects of inherited [APOE4].”

Griffin is the Alexa and William T. Dillard chairperson in Geriatric Research and a distinguished faculty scholar in the College of Medicine and director of research at the Institute on Aging. She is also a professor in the college’s departments of Neurobiology & Developmental Sciences, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. Notably, she is a winner of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award and inductee of the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame.

Most Alzheimer’s research nationally has focused on treatments that can clear away the brain’s plaques and tangles associated with the disease, but that approach has yielded unimpressive results.

Griffin notes that people with mild Alzheimer’s symptoms have already lost about half or more of the neurons responsible for memory and reasoning, which has led to her focus on prevention.

Griffin’s team is advancing its innovative work with a recent five-year, $2.35 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

“Our hope is that people who have one or two copies of [APOE4] will one day take the drug regularly throughout their life and significantly reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” Griffin said.

Balasubramaniam, co-principal investigator on the NIH grant with Griffin, said UAMS built the first known full-length structure of APOE4 protein in 2017, which he created using bioinformatics and computational modeling techniques. This foundational work led to the discovery of the druggable site on the gene. Balasubramaniam’s unique skills and curiosity, Griffin said, were the catalyst for the discoveries.

“I don’t know of anyone else in the world but Dr. Balasubramaniam who can do the work that’s in this paper,” Griffin said of the assistant professor and Inglewood Scholar in the Department of Geriatrics.

While most institutions still manually screen drug compounds, which can take years, Balasubramaniam oversees a computational biology suite with high-performance GPU servers that he used to screen about 800,000 compounds in two days. His computer-simulated findings were validated in various model systems.

A provisional patent has been awarded on the drug, and full patent approval is pending.

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Bodies of woman, child, found off interstate in

North Little Rock

NORTH LITTLE ROCK — North Little Rock Police are investigating the deaths of two people after finding the bodies of a woman and child on the Interstate 440 ramp.

According to a report, officers found the bodies while responding to a call about a possible body found at the ramp near Highway 165.

That report said police found both bodies at the scene, as well as a second child, who was taken to the hospital.

Police said they did not know how the woman and child died. They sent the bodies to the Arkansas State Crime Lab for autopsies.

Authorities are working to identify those deceased. The names will then be held until next of kin are notified.

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15-year-old boy charged in triple murder case

LITTLE ROCK — A 15-yearold boy is being held and charged with capital murder after the bodies of three people were found shot dead at a home in a central Arkansas community over the weekend. The Saline County Sheriff's Office on Monday said three victims were found shot dead when officers responded to a structure fire on Saturday west of Traskwood, a city about 35 miles (57 km) southwest of Little Rock.

The Sheriff's Office identified the victims as 47-year-old Jacob Martin Sr., 53-year-old Dara Martin and 16-year-old Aleah Martin.

The sheriff's office didn't identify the suspect, who they said was questioned that day and later charged as an adult with capital murder. The sheriff's office said the teen, who is also being charged with arson, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence, is being held without bond.

A spokesperson for the sheriff's office did not say if the teen is related to the three victims.