Clinical Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY – CLINICAL CORE The Exploratory Vanderbilt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (VADRC) Clinical Core will support local and national Alzheimer’s disease research activities. Under the direction of Dr. Paul Newhouse, the Clinical Core will enhance existing institutional infrastructure to engage and recruit older adults into Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia research opportunities to support creating a future P30 Outreach and Recruitment Core. Recruitment activities will build upon the existing 4000+ member Alzheimer’s Disease Research Registry and focus on recruiting memory clinic patients and community-dwelling older adults interested in biomarker-focused Alzheimer’s disease research opportunities. A strong emphasis will be placed on partnering with the Vanderbilt-Meharry Alliance for outreach and engagement in the local African American community with a focus on enhancing biomarker and autopsy participation. The Clinical Core will be responsible for establishing and annually following a “proof of concept” cohort of 150 well-characterized participants age 60 and older who are cognitively unimpaired or meet established criteria for mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease. Leveraging well-established protocols and extensive local infrastructure, we will collect detailed clinical, cognitive, neuroimaging, genetic, and biospecimen data. These data will support our Center’s thematic emphasis on prevention targets, large-scale discovery, and pharmacological interventions that collectively emphasize non-amyloid pathways of injury commonly co-occurring with core Alzheimer’s disease pathology. The Clinical Core will engage cohort participation in antemortem brain donation assent, and a scalable autopsy protocol pipeline will be implemented to support a future P30 Neuropathology Core in collaboration with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The Clinical Core will support local and national research efforts in Alzheimer’s disease by fostering collaborations and sharing data locally and nationally. Data and biospecimens will be collected in a uniform manner according to current best-practices and shared with the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, the National Centralized Repository for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias, and the National Institute on Aging Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease Storage Site. The Clinical Core will maximize local research initiatives by distributing clinical, cognitive, neuroimaging, genetic, and biospecimen data to qualified investigators and maximizing Clinical Core cohort participation in investigator initiated and multi-site studies. Finally, the Clinical Core will support training the next generation of Alzheimer’s disease clinicians and investigators by providing participants, data, biospecimens, collaboration, and leadership opportunities. Our interdisciplinary Clinical Core investigators have demonstrated expertise and a proven track record in participant recruitment and retention as well as complex protocol implementation. Thus, the Clinical Core will be a successful focal point of the VADRC in supporting both local and national Alzheimer’s disease research activities.