About

About the Center

The CTE Center is an independent academic research center located at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. It is part of the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (BU ADRC), which was established in 1996 as one of 38 ADR Centers in the U.S. funded by the National Institutes of Health to advance research on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

In collaboration with the VA Boston Healthcare System, the Concussion Legacy Foundation, and other NIH funded ADRCs, the BU CTE Center conducts high-impact, innovative research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and military personnel.

Ann McKee, MD, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Pathology, is Director of the BU CTE Center and UNITE Brain Bank. Dr. McKee also directs the Boston University ADRC and is the Chief of Neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System, including the UNITE Brain Bank, BU ADRC Brain Bank, and Framingham Heart Study Brain Bank.

The neuropathologists, Thor Stein, MD, PhD, Director of Molecular Research, Bertrand (Russ) Huber, MD, PhD, Director of 3-D Imaging, and Victor Alvarez, MD, Director of Lab Operations, participate in the daily operations of the UNITE, ADRC, and Framingham Heart Study Brain Banks and conduct neuropathological analyses and research for the CTE Center. In addition, Jon Cherry, PhD, is the Director of the Digital Core for the BU ADRC and CTE Centers.

Michael Alosco, PhD, and Jesse Mez, MD, MS, co-direct the Clinical Research team and participate in clinical neurological, neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and biomarker data collection.

Research conducted at the CTE Center continues to lead the field in furthering the understanding of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The UNITE Brain Bank is the largest tissue repository in the world focused on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and CTE. The UNITE Brain Bank contains more than 1,600 brains, including 800 brains that have been diagnosed with CTE using the recently defined NINDS criteria for the diagnosis of CTE. For more information on the neuropathological diagnosis of CTE, please see The Second NINDS/NIBIB Consensus Meeting to Define Neuropathological Criteria for the Diagnosis of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

The CTE Center has three main divisions of research, Pathological Research, Clinical Research, and Molecular Research. They work cohesively to further our knowledge about chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other neurodegenerative disease, and strive to find a way to diagnose this disease in living persons. To learn more about our published research using UNITE Brain Bank resources, please visit the Significant Research Findings page.

Dr. McKee and her team of neuropathologists and other investigators have published more than 100 studies focused on CTE (see below).

What is CTE?