Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center receives $7.7 million NIH grant renewal

By Mary Hardin

“The work of the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center has been fundamental to a better understanding of sporadic and familial Alzheimer disease and the discovery of new forms of hereditary adult onset neurodegenerative dementias. These are essential steps toward the development of therapeutic strategies for dementing illnesses.”

Bernardino Ghetti, M.D., distinguished professor and director of the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center

The funding was first awarded to the IU School of Medicine faculty in 1991 to establish a center focusing on dementing illnesses, including Alzheimer disease. The grant was renewed by the NIH in 1996 and again in 2001 for another 5 years.

NIH-funded Alzheimer disease centers are expected to provide resources to enhance ongoing research, bringing together biomedical, behavioral and clinical science investigators to study the etiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of Alzheimer disease, as well as improve health-care delivery. There are 29 such centers in the United States.

The Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center was established with four major objectives in the areas of Alzheimer disease and related dementias: to foster clinical and neuropathologic studies; to develop educational programs; to support and further develop research; and to promote understanding of the diseases in the state of Indiana and neighboring areas.

“Much progress has been made in the fields of epidemiology, biochemistry and genetics of Alzheimer disease and other dementias since IU first received its core grant,” said Bernardino Ghetti, M.D., distinguished professor and director of the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center. “We are on the cutting edge of discovery for diseases that each year affect thousands of people and their families.”

The center is comprised of four cores, which individually contribute to the larger efforts of the multidisciplinary team.

The Administrative Core provides staff and resources to support the team efforts.

The Clinical Core, led by Martin Farlow, M.D., professor of neurology, is responsible for the treatment and therapy of Alzheimer disease and dementia patients. It recruits, evaluates, diagnoses and characterizes groups of patients with Alzheimer disease and other dementias.

The Neuropathology Core, under the leadership of Dr. Ghetti, provides technical resources, laboratory facilities and expertise for the collection, diagnosis and storage of brain tissue obtained at autopsy from institutions around the country. The Neuropathology Core provides pathologic data to families, referring physicians and basic researchers. This core includes a dementia laboratory, a laboratory for morphometric studies of degenerative diseases and a brain bank, which is a repository for pathology samples.

The National Cell Repository Core, led by P. Michael Conneally, distinguished professor, has developed the only NIH-funded cell repository to provide the research community with cell samples and DNA from affected individuals. The repository is to facilitate research to expand the scientific understanding of the disease and ultimately to promote development of cures for dementias. The repository collects, maintains and distributes DNA and cell lines from affected families to qualified investigators. It presently contains DNA and/or cell lines from 3,500 people representing approximately 760 families with histories of Alzheimer disease and related dementias.

The Education Information and Transfer Core is an outreach program to support affected individuals. A comprehensive and expansive program has been developed to assist and educate health care providers, social workers, long-term care providers, the public and affected families. Leading this effort is Mary Austrom, associate professor of psychiatry.

The Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center has indeed left its mark in the rapid-paced research area.

During the past 10 years, the IU School of Medicine scientists who make up the center have significantly improved our understanding of Alzheimer disease and have been instrumental in the identification of other types of dementia, including frontotemporal dementia linked to chromosome 17.

These researchers have focused their studies on the changes in the brain that underlie Alzheimer disease as well as other types of dementia, the progression of disease among patients with Alzheimer disease and other kinds of dementia, how genes can affect an individual’s risk of developing dementia or memory loss and the clinical and pathologic characteristics in familial dementias.

“The work of the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center has been fundamental to a better understanding of sporadic and familial Alzheimer disease and the discovery of new forms of hereditary adult onset neurodegenerative dementias,” said Dr. Ghetti. “These are essential steps toward the development of therapeutic strategies for dementing illnesses.”

For online information about the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center, see:

http://www.pathology.iupui.edu/ad/Default.htm