For Investigators

Our mission is to promote and support scientific research on Alzheimer’s disease and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).  We encourage investigators to request data and resources from the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (BU ADRC) to support their research needs and endeavors.

Please read carefully to determine which type of request you would like to submit then click on the link to start the request process. Please be aware, that depending on the request, you may need to fill out more than one request form. All requests are formally reviewed by the BU ADRC Executive Committee.

If you start the online form but do not have time to complete it or you need to gather more information, please use the “save and continue” button at the bottom of each page until you get to the last page of the form.  There you will have an option to save the request until it is complete.  Once the request is complete please use the Submit button to send the request to our Executive Committee for review.

Note: In order to fulfill our center’s mission, information regarding our data and participants’ enrollment must be reported back to our center.

Clinical Data Request

Clinical data requests include demographic, diagnostic, and other risk factor data on HOPE participants. More limited data is available on Registry participants. Please submit a Clinical research data Request Form to access existing clinical research data.

MRI Data Request

MRI data is available on a subset of the HOPE study participants. These data were collected on a 3T Philips scanner using a 32-channel head coil at the Center for Biomedical Imaging at Boston University School of Medicine. This scanner is ADNI certified. The MRI scan protocol included a T1 MPRAGE sequence, FLAIR sequence, T2* sequence, HARDI sequence, and resting-state fMRI sequence. The T1 MPRAGE sequences have been processed using Freesurfer and quantitative data is available through the BU-ADRC data core. Raw images in dicom format are available for sharing with qualified researchers for all sequences. MRI scan acquisition with this protocol began in 2015. Follow-up scans are now being collected from selected participants. All scans were acquired using study-specific ids and no identifying information is included in the scan headers. This information would need to be obtained from the BU-ADRC data core. Please contact Dr. Killiany, BU-ADRC Biomarker Core (killiany@bu.edu) for more information about these MRI scans. 

BioSample Request

To access BioSamples, please submit a BioSample Request Form

Brain Tissue Request

To obtain brain tissue samples for your research, please submit a Brain Tissue Request Form. Due to high demand, all requests for tissue will be limited to a maximum of 20 samples per request. Please note all requests for brain tissue usually take at least  6 months to fill after your request has been approved.  

Participant Recruitment for Research Request

To obtain permission to recruit BU ADRC registry participants for your research or to access existing registry clinical data, please submit a Participant Recruitment  Request Form.

The BU ADRC offers two levels of support for clinical research recruitment:

1. A postal mailing will be distributed to any participants who may be eligible for a Center-approved study. Our Center’s Data Core staff will organize responses to the mailing and provide the approved research team with a spreadsheet of participants who meet the inclusion criteria for the study and who have expressed interest in hearing more about the project.
2. A member of our recruitment staff will actively recruit on behalf of a Center-approved study, including community-based presentations, recruitment through formal affiliations with area continuing care retirement communities, memory fairs, community memory screenings, and screening of more than 80 telephone inquiries each month. If you would like to leverage this type of recruitment assistance for your study, please email Senior Data Manager, Diane Dixon at dixon@bu.edu.