The Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Center (BU ADC) facilitates a wide range of research on clinical-pathological correlations in normal aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia;genetic and environmental risk and protective factors for AD;pathogenesis and animal models of neurodegeneration;and interventions to prevent and treat AD. The BU ADC provides access to registry participants, postmortem brain tissue, DNA and transgenic mice to qualified investigators and funds innovative pilot projects. The BU ADC is composed of six cores. The Administrative Core oversees the BU ADC, ensures optimal resource utilization and coordinates and integrates BU ADC activities. The Clinical Core recruits and comprehensively evaluates, a Patient/Control Registry with more than 600 participants annually. The Data Management and Statistics Core provides infrastructure to optimize the information flow and maintains databases to define resources available to investigators. The Neuropathology Core establishes accurate, comprehensive neuropathological diagnoses, facilitates clinicopathological studies, and provides tissue to investigators. The Education and Information Transfer Core conducts a wide range of education, outreach, and recruitment activities to support the Center. The Murine Breeding and Molecular Genetics Core provides transgenic mice and genotyping services to investigators. The BU ADC supports national AD research by collecting and transmitting a uniform data set (UDS) to the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC). The BU ADC is a platform for training medical and graduate students, fellows and junior faculty in AD research. Consistent with the RFA, the BU ADC has shifted focus from late stage dementia to concentrate on research on normal aging and the transition from normal aging to MCI and to the earliest stages of dementia. The BU ADC has made a special effort to address the needs of, and research with, ethnically diverse populations. Twenty percent of Registry participants are African American. The BU ADC collaborates with major NIH-funded studies on vascular risk factors and AD including the Framingham Heart Study, MIRAGE, ADNI, ADCS, REVEAL and the Honolulu-Asian Aging study and leads a NACC-funded Vascular Neuropathology Consortium. In the next funding cycle the BU ADC will continue to provide essential resources to increase research productivity, help generate new ideas, and facilitate collaborative AD-related research.
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