This application seeks five years of initial support to establish the Arizona Alzheimer's Disease Core Center (ADCC). The ADCC will provide the administrative structure, leadership, communication, support, and clinical and histopathological database needed to help fulfill our scientific mission, integrate our research program, promote our scientific progress, and ensure our accountability; it will work closely with researchers inside and outside Arizona, other ADC's, and the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (Core A). The ADCC will help researchers access data from and conduct studies in 400 patients with dementia, 80 patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 240 normal elderly control subjects who are clinically well characterized, followed annually, and enrolled in our brain donation program; it will annually evaluate 180 additional Hispanic subjects in these three groups and explore the feasibility of conducting studies in 6 Native American Nations and Tribes; and it will provide access to data acquired in an independent study of cognitively normal persons with no copies, one copy, and two copies of the apolipoprotein E4 allele (Core B). The ADCC will provide histopathological diagnoses in expired brain donors and high-quality brain tissue to researchers inside Arizona and around the world (Core C). It will increase the number of productive scientists involved in AD research through education, training, pilot studies, and collaborative research; it will enhance skills for the professional care of patients with AD and related disorders; it will educate the general public about AD and our ADCC; and it will provide innovative Hispanic and Native American educational outreach programs (Core D). The Arizona ADCC will further integrate, coordinate, and capitalize on resources and activities in our recently established, state-supported, multi-institutional Center for Alzheimer's Disease Research (CADR). The CADR's major theme is the early detection and prevention of AD. Its major goals: (1) to detect and track AD in patients with dementia and MCI, cognitively normal persons at genetic risk for AD, and laboratory animals using brain imaging techniques and other research methods; (2) to help clarify certain AD mechanisms and risk factors; (3) to further characterize the neural systems involved in aspects of memory, language, emotion, and consciousness, the cognitive operations to which they are related, and the extent to which they are preferentially affected by AD and aging; (4) to provide new methods and strategies for the study of AD and aging in persons and laboratory animals; (5) to help identify treatments to halt the progression and, indeed, prevent the onset of AD; and (6) to establish a truly integrated, scientifically productive """"""""research laboratory without walls,"""""""" which serves as a model of multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research.
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