Kansas University researchers will use a $2.1 million grant to determine whether two promising early drugs can help combat Alzheimer’s.

The National Institutes of Health awarded the four-year grant to professor of pharmacology Mary Michaelis. During the study, Michaelis will test two drugs developed by KU researchers on animals with symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s.

The hope, Michaelis said, is that eventually one of the drugs would be developed to the point where it could be tested in humans.

Michaelis is collaborating with several other professors at KU. She said no usable data likely would be available until the study has been under way for more than a year.