Projects

These awards are aimed at junior faculty within the first five years of their appointment. Exceptions are possible for mid-level faculty entering the field of dementia research.

Award Year 05/01/2024 - 04/30/2025

• Schneeberger, Marc- "Neurovascular plasticity: a bridge between obesity and neurodegeneration"
• Favuzzi, Emilia - "Microglia contributions to network hyperactivity in Alzheimer’s disease"
• Snell, Heather - "Shared vs distinct cerebellar mechanisms of motor and cognitive impairment"
• Nandy, Anirvan - “Toward a marmoset model of AD”
• Vives-Rodriguez, Ana - "Deep phenotyping of positive psychiatric symptoms and their neuropsychological profile across the spectrum of Lewy Body disease"
• Wei, Liahnuan - "Region-Specific Perturb-seq for Genome-Wide Modifier Screens of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementia-Associater Alternative Splicing"

Award Year 5/01/2023 - 4/30/2024

Award Year 5/01/2022 - 4/30/2023

• Yifei Cai, PhD: "Molecular mechansms of axonal pathology in Alzheimer's disease human neurons"
  
• Sathish Ramakrishnan, PhD: "Mechanism of exocytosis protein in Alzheimer's disease"
• Dibyadeep Datta: "Interrogating the molecular mechanisms mediating the emergence of biomarker pT217-tau in AD"

Award Year 5/01/2021 - 4/30/2022

• Eyiyemisi Damisah, MD: "Investigating statistical learning in the Dementias"
  
• Hongying Shen, PhD: "Expanding Neurometabolic Biochemistry Underlying Alzheimer's disease"
• Takuya Toyonaga, MD, PhD: "Whole brain in vivo characterization of synaptic density in Alzheimer's disease model rat with different rearing environments"
• Le Zhang, PhD: "Sex-Specific Single Cell Expression Profiles and Genetic Risk in Alzheimer's disease"
• Yize Zhao, PhD: "Connectome coupling and genetic underpinning in the Supernormal"

Award Year 6/15/2020 - 4/30/2021

• Adam Mecca, MD, PhD: "Novel Biomarkers of Synaptic Health in Alzheimer’s disease"
• Carolyn Fredericks, MD: "Tau PET & Network Integrity in Atypical Alzheimer’s disease"
• Evelyn Lake, PhD: "A multimodal PET, MR, and fluorescence CA2 imaging study of a murine model of CTE"

These awards are aimed at investigators at the associate research scientist/instructor level, although exceptions are possible for early-stage assistant professors.

Award Year 5/01/2022 - 4/30/2023

• Marcello DiStasio, MD, PhD: "Uncovering Proinflammatory Signatures in Alzheimer's Disease Using Spatial Transcriptomics"
• Juan Young, MD: "Investigating a CD8⁺ T cell associated aging gene signature in Alzheimer's disease"

Award Year 5/01/2021 - 4/30/2022

• Daniel Jane-Wit, MD, PhD, RPVI: "ZFYVE21 and Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy in Alzheimer's disease Related Dementias"
• Dibyadeep Datta: "Investigating the role of pT217-tau in the pathogenesis of AD and relevance for biomarker development"

Previously awarded pilot projects funded by a NIA ADRC grant.

Award Year 4/1/2015 - 3/31/2016

• Janghoo Lim, PhD: "The role of Neuroinflammation in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease with focus on nemo-Like Kinase"
• Ming-Kai Chen, MD, PhD: "Brain PET Imaging of Synaptic Density in Alzheimer's disease"

Award Year 4/1/2016 - 3/31/2017

• Ming-Kai Chen, MD, PhD: "Brain PET Imaging of Synaptic Density in Alzheimer's disease"
• Becky Carlyle, PhD: "Profiling 3D Amyloid Patterns"

Award Year 4/1/2017 - 3/31/2018

• Marc Hammarlund, PhD: "A new C. elegans model for AB42 toxicity"

Award Year 4/1/2018 - 3/31/2019

• Carla Rothlin, PhD: "Mechanisms of reactive astrogliosis - a critical feature in Alzheimer's disease"
• Sreeganga Chandra, PhD: "Testing Synapse Protection Strategies for Alzheimer's disease"
• Anita Huttner, MD: "Modeling Sporadic Alzheimer's disease with Human IPSC-Derived Cerebral Organoids"

Award Year 4/1/2019 - 3/31/2020

• Kurt Zilm, PhD: "Structural characterization by NMR of amyloid-beta oligomers bounds in hydrogel phase to prion protein"
• Le Zhang, PhD: "Single nucleus and single-cell profiling of human brain and CSF in Alzheimer's disease"

Award Year 6/15/2020 - 4/30/2021

• Eyiyemisi Damisah, MD: "Investigating statistical learning in the Dementias"
• Yize Zhao, PhD: "Connectome coupling and genetic underpinning in the Supernormal"
• Daniel Jane-Wit, MD, PhD, RPVI: "ZFYVE21 and Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy in Alzheimer's disease Related Dementias"

These three projects (Lysosomes, Post-Synaptic Densities and GABAergic Networks) were funded by the previous P50 grant cycle. The projects worked together to achieve the goal of translating laboratory discoveries into novel effective clinical therapies. Their unifying theme is a focus on the cell biology of specific neurons, and its disruption in Alzheimer's disease triggered by abnormal forms of Amyloid-β peptide.

These development projects are aimed to provide seed money for faculty investigators to explore the feasibility of Alzheimer's disease studies and to obtain sufficient preliminary data to seek support through other funding mechanisms. They are specifically designed to foster the work of young investigators (including both assistant professors and associate research scientists) beginning a career in Alzheimer's research.

Award Year 5/1/23 - 4/30/24

• Insoo Kang: “Investigating comprehensive genomic profile and heterogeneity of viral antigen-specific T cells in patients with Alzheimer's disease using single cell RNA sequencing”
• Jianbing Zhou: “Ribonucleoprotein-mediated genome editing therapy for Alzheimer's Disease”

Award Year 5/1/2022 - 4/30/2023

• Caroline Fredericks, MD: "Predictive modeling of genetic Alzheimer's risk and memory performance in healthy older adults"
• Chao Zheng, PhD: "Longitudinal ROCK2-PET imaging study in the TgF344-AD transgenic rat model of AD"

Award Year 5/01/2021 - 4/30/2022

• Pallavi Gopal, MD, PhD: "TDP-43 transport and spatiotemporal regulation of RNA in Alzheimer's disease"
• David Matuskey, MD and Arman Fesharaki, MD, PhD, BMath: "Novel in vivo synaptic imaging in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD)"

Award Year 6/15/2020 - 4/30/2021

• Pallavi Gopal, MD, PhD: "TDP-43 transport and spatiotemporal regulation of RNA in Alzheimer's disease"
• David Matuskey, MD and Arman Fesharaki, MD, PhD, BMath: "Novel in vivo synaptic imaging in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia (bvFTD)"