Emory Alzheimer's Disease Research Center

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SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: OVERALL The Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) at Emory University provides Georgia and the region with comprehensive clinical, research, and educational programs. This application outlines our success in building an environment that encourages and supports innovative projects with a central theme of discovery and translation of new biomarkers and pathogenic mechanisms to enable early identification, intervention, and ultimately prevention of AD and related disorders. Given the well documented disparities in clinical research participation and burden of disease for AD in the African American community, the Goizueta ADRC dedicates effort and resources to help better understand and address inter-individual differences in AD and ADRD, ranging from ethno-racial factors to individual differences in genetic and protein variation. We benefit from generous institutional support from Emory, one of the nation’s fastest growing research academic medical centers, the generous Atlanta community, and a large and highly collaborative interdisciplinary team of more than 100 faculty across Emory and local institutions. Our cores work in a concerted manner to effectively recruit, evaluate, and engage a diverse cohort of participants who actively take part in a wide variety of research studies. The addition of a Minority Engagement Core helps to further engage special populations, most notably the African American community, to help the Outreach, Recruitment and Engagement Core and Clinical Core with an ambitious goal of 50% African American participation in the UDS cohort. Our Biomarker Core provides state-of-the-art genetic, proteomic, and brain imaging analyses, complemented by an extensive biospecimen repository of well-characterized blood, CSF, and DNA samples, and a large bank of well- characterized postmortem brains and spinal cords in the Neuropathology Core. These valuable resources will continue to be distributed widely for a variety of approved studies, including research Developmental Projects and in support of local and national collaborations. Generous institutional and philanthropic support is used to seed a much larger base of innovative research. The ADRC educational programs reach a broad audience of trainees, researchers, health care professionals, and the public. New to us with this application, the Research Education Component will help formalize our longstanding dedication to the cultivation of the next generation of scientists. With a strong commitment to diversity and inclusiveness, our program benefits from the engagement of a large and multidisciplinary core of training faculty mentors from institutions throughout the greater Atlanta area. Collectively, the ADRC is poised to continue to make important contributions to the national strategy for AD treatment and prevention.