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Our Center is primarily supported through a Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center (ADCC) grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The main function of the ADCCs is to support cutting-edge research by providing well-characterized patients, patient and family information, and tissue and other biological samples from persons with AD and from age-matched control subjects for research projects. Each of these federally funded centers includes various “Cores.” A core is a shared central laboratory or clinical research facility, service, or resource whose function is essential to the scientific purpose of the ADCC. Each core is directed by an investigator with substantial expertise related to the core. Like all other federally funded ADCCs, our Center is led by an Administrative Core that sets the overall direction of the Center and ensures optimal utilization of Center resources. The Center Director leads this Core, which oversees all Center activities and administers its Pilot Grant Program. The largest of the Center cores is the Clinical Core, whose main purpose is to provide well-characterized patients and control subjects for research projects (e.g., drug/intervention studies). This core provides educational and clinical resources to patients, aging control subjects, and caregivers, while charting the course of the disease in patients and age-related changes in the research population being followed by the Center. The Data Management & Statistics Core provide data management and statistical consulting to the research projects and the cores of the ADCC. Data cores are important to facilitate local analyses and collaborations among Centers and the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center. The Education and Information Transfer Core serves to 1) help recruit and retain subjects for particular research protocols and clinical trials, with a special emphasis on minorities and other underserved populations; 2) spearhead effective outreach programs that will publicize the ADCC and educate families and caregivers; and 3) support development of professional staff on clinical and research skills related to Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. These efforts afford an important liaison and outreach from the ADCC to patients, their caregivers, and the professional community. Our Neuropathology Core provides state of the art diagnostic services and a collection of well-prepared brain material appropriate for the research requirements of local and national research efforts, including within and across Centers. This Core provides post mortem diagnoses on cases and normal control subjects enrolled in the Clinical Core, as well as on other well documented AD cases and controls, allowing for valuable analyses of clinical-pathological correlations. Finally, our Center also includes an optional Translational Animal Core, reflecting our site's particular expertise in genetic research involving animal models of Alzheimer's disease. This Core provides researchers with tissue samples and multiple types of colonies of live transgenic mice. |
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