Arizona Alzheimer's Disease Research Center

OVERALL — PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Over the last 20 years, Arizona researchers established NIA's first statewide Alzheimer's Disease Center and the nation's most extensive statewide collaboration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) research. They made pioneering contributions to the unusually early detection, tracking and study of AD and the accelerated evaluation of AD prevention therapies. The Center includes researchers from seven organizations, six in the Phoenix metropolitan area and one in Tucson. It has supported 150 researchers from organizations across the state and helping them to generate more than $2 billion in new grants, contracts, philanthropic, state and organizational investments. The Arizona AD Research Center (ADRC) will capitalize on the Center's leadership, statewide collaborative model, major organizational commitments, and extensively shared scientific resources and its very existence to make the scientific fight against AD a top priority in the state. Its resources, strategic plan, and related programs and prevention trials are specifically intended to set the stage for promising blood tests to transform AD/ADRD research, treatment development, and care, include persons from diverse backgrounds, find an effective prevention therapy by 2025, and fulfill National Alzheimer's Project Act (NAPA) goals. We will use ADRC, organizational and philanthropic funds to provide an extraordinary resource of data and blood samples for neuropathological study and diagnostic validation of BBBs for ADRD using blood samples from several hundred brain donors in the last years of life who have comprehensive neuropathological assessments after they die. The overall goals of the Center will be accomplished through coordinated activities of its six Cores and the Research Education Component (REC). The Administrative Core will provide the scientific leadership to the ADRC as a whole. The multi-site Clinical Core will perform standard evaluations and collect UDS and additional data on all participants, including a large number of Hispanic/Latino and Native American participants. The Neuropathology Core will provide neuropathologic diagnoses and process, store and distribute postmortem brain tissue, including from those who provided blood samples in the last 1-2 years of their lives. The Biomarker Core will support and provide access to genetics, brain imaging (MRI, amyloid PET, tau PET), cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and BBBs of AD. The Outreach, Recruitment and Engagement (ORE) Core will support the efforts of the Clinical and Neuropathology Core, providing a range of educational and outreach programs for healthy adults, patients and family caregivers in our Center's catchment area, including from Arizona's large Hispanic/Latino and Native American communities. The Data Management and Statistics Core will support all the data management, informatics and statistical needs of the Cores and Center. The REC will coordinate closely with each of the Cores and leverage external partnership with two Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMARs) to attract and support the development of new researchers and clinicians. Together these activities will help set the stage for BBBs to revolutionize ADRD research, treatment and care, inform the study of preclinical AD, and help provide the best possible change to find and support the approval of an AD prevention therapy in 2025.