Training Grant on Alzheimer's Disease and ADRD at Indiana University

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The overall goal of the program is to provide multidisciplinary training in Alzheimer’s disease and AD-related dementias (AD/ADRD) to predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees, producing a critically-needed translational workforce for developing effective treatments. The Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) is nationally recognized for AD/ADRD research. IUSM-associated centers include the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, the National Cell Repository for Alzheimer’s Disease, the Indiana Center for Neuroimaging, the Regenstrief Institute and the Center for Aging Research. Importantly, the NIA recently funded the MODEL-AD Center, the Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Discovery Center, and the IUSM-directed Longitudinal Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease Study. IUSM has invested significantly in state-of-the-art facilities, instrumentation, and the hiring of 10 new AD/ADRD faculty over the past 4 years. This T32 application has enlisted 25 participating faculty with a broad range of expertise including data science, non-invasive imaging, the development and study of animal models, genomics, epidemiology, drug development and discovery, and clinical studies and trials. These faculty are exceptional mentors and are funded at $42M total ($1.69M/faculty annually). This application requests funding for 4 pre- and 4 post-doctoral trainees. We will recruit trainees with diverse backgrounds and train them in AD/ADRD research with contemporary approaches and methodologies using state-of-the-art instrumentation. The predoctoral trainees are graduate students in the Medical Neuroscience Graduate Program, recruited from the IUSM Indiana Biomedical Gateway graduate program and the MD/PhD program. Targeted recruiting of postdoctoral trainees with diverse backgrounds is achieved informally, through our website, and at national and regional meetings. Enrollment in the MedNeuro Graduate Program has doubled since 2017 and the number of postdoctoral fellows with participating faculty has increased from 4 to 27. The predoctoral training program consists of foundational course work in neuroscience, neurodegenerative diseases, and data science along with elective studies. Postdoctoral trainees are offered didactic training in data science. The NIA-sponsored centers and resources at IUSM allow trainees to work on new disease models, advanced drug-discovery technologies, and in clinical settings. This positions trainees to conduct innovative basic, translational, and clinical AD/ADRD research.