CLINICAL CORE The primary goals of the Clinical Core are to support and enhance research efforts of the Goizueta Alzheimer?s Disease Research Center (ADRC) at Emory to advance cutting-edge research to identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets while reducing racial disparities in AD research. The Clinical Core plays a central role in the Goizueta ADRC by engaging diverse research participants and driving activities that reflect the Center?s overall themes. To accomplish these goals, the Clinical Core has well-established processes to recruit, track, characterize, and retain a cohort of longitudinal research participants and to effectively coordinate activities and share data with other components of the ADRC and external partners. In the current funding period, the Clinical Core established a Longitudinal Biomarker Collection to support high-priority multicenter research projects, including the Accelerating Medicine Partnership for AD (AMP-AD) and Molecular Mechanisms of the Vascular Etiology of AD (M2OVE-AD). Successful development of the LBC led to a competitive supplement to establish a Biomarker Core which will continue as a Core component in the ADRC renewal. Also, during the current cycle, we succeeded in our ambitious goal for increasing the diversity of our UDS cohort by enrolling an equal number of new African-American and Caucasian participants. This success supported the establishment of a Minority Engagement Core (MEC).
Specific Aims for this renewal are to 1) Establish and maintain a diverse cohort of well-characterized research participants to support priorities in current ADRD research; 2) Advance biomarker discovery efforts by harmonizing procedures for sample collection and clinical phenotyping across multiple related projects and cohorts; and 3) Expand and integrate activities in ADRD, including vascular cognitive impairment and Lewy body diseases. Achieving these Specific Aims will advance the priorities identified in the National Alzheimer?s Project Act (NAPA) and recommendations from the NIH ADRD Research Summits, and will ultimately lead to effective diagnostic tools and treatments for individuals suffering from AD and related disorders.
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