The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is rising at an alarming rate. California, with its large population and disproportionate number of elderly, is especially impacted by this disorder; there are an estimated 180,000 dementia patients, many of whom suffer from AD, in Los Angeles County alone. It is imperative that the scientific community respond to this public health challenge by developing improved means of treatment and management and generating strategies that will lead to cure and prevention of AD. Establishment of an Alzheimer's Disease Center (ADC) at UCLA will allow improved support of on-going AD-related projects, increased focusing of the considerable technological resources and faculty expertise on AD- related problems, and recruitment and support of new investigators with AD- related talents. We propose an ADC with five cores - Clinical, Neuroimaging, Neuropathology, Education/Information Transfer, and Administrative. A Data Management and Communications Unit will provide data management, data linking, image analysis capabilities, quality assurance, and statistical services as well as sophisticated electronic inter-site communication and information exchange. There will be three primary clinical sites - UCLA Medical Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and the West LA Veterans Affairs Medical Center (WLA VAMC). Patient access from Harbor-UCLA and WLA VAMC will maximize the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the ADC patient population. The unique strengths of the proposed ADC are: 1) presence of an extensive array of imaging techniques relevant to the study of AD, 2) availability of advanced neuropathological techniques that can routinely be applied to AD autopsies, 3) sophisticated data management techniques allowing linking of diverse types of information, 4) provision of access of an ethnically diverse population, 5) assessment of both the neuropsychiatric and the neuropsychological dimension of AD, 6) routine evaluation of the emotional state of caregivers of AD patients, and 7) extension of dementia research training to a variety of existing Fellowships and educational programs. Pilot studies will investigate a potential in vitro model of AD, study of the role of nerve growth factor in determining regional cellular vulnerability in AD, and determine the utility of magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of AD. An outstanding group of external and internal advisors have been assembled to guide the growth of the UCLA ADC.
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