For the past 35 years, the UCSD-ADRC Neuropathology Core has been instrumental in providing support for establishing the accuracy of clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), delineating structural and clinico-pathological correlates of dementia in AD, identifying new neuropathological entities causing dementia, providing tissues to investigators and helping to better understand the mechanisms of synaptic and other aspects of neurodegeneration in AD. For the renewal there will be 6 Aims of the Neuropathology Core: 1) perform rapid autopsies and procure brains from the ADRC participants, using a standardized protocol; 2) perform standardized neuropathological diagnoses and immunocytochemical analysis of demented and normal aged (control) patients clinically evaluated by the UCSD ADRC following the new NIA criteria; 3) perform clinical neuropathology assessments on brain, spinal cords and eyes from postmortem material from ADRC participants using best practice (NIA-AA) guidelines. Perform immunochemical analysis relevant to neurodegeneration and synapse loss in MCI and early AD cases; 4) maintain a state of the art brain repository to provide the ADRC projects and other investigators with well characterized including early AD and MCI cases; 5) foster the utilization of the ADRC Neuropathology tissue repository for new research and inter-center collaborations. Approximately 50 to 60 cases and over 100 tissue requests are processed a year. The neuropathological results will be submitted to the National Alzheimer?s Coordinating Committee (NACC) in compliance with NIA requirements. As part of the mission of the Core we will also continue to support extensive collaborations with national and international investigators and train fellows, residents, graduate and undergraduate students in neuropathology and microscopy techniques. With the ADRC Outreach, Recruitment and Education (ORE) Core organize meetings to encourage the use of the neuropathology core; 6) Mentor young and minority investigators in neuropathology and neuropathological research. We will foster the next generation of scientists by encouraging them to conduct research with the postmortem tissues. We will continue to provide tissues to local and national investigators and for multi-center initiatives such as the Genome-Wide Analysis Studies organized by NIA.
