投资希望：一个富裕家族对抗自身疾病，推动前颗粒蛋白研究

A wealthy family fighting its own disease boosted research on a little-studied brain protein, progranulin. Can it spur new dementia treatments? JENNIE ERIN SMITH Robin Richards Donohoe, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, remembers 2005 as the year her charming, outgoing mother, Alice, “just went mute.” Alice Richards was a born communicator, a journalism major, and mother of seven who, as her husband’s company helped bring electricity to the rural South, threw her energies into countless civic and philanthropic causes. She could give a stirring speech, her family members recall. But as Alice entered her 70s, her words began to slip away. Like her father and sister before her, Alice had been struck with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). …