Research News

The National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a grant expected to total $15.4 million to continue funding the Cleveland Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. The new five-year award will support the multi-institution collaboration, which aims to accelerate research for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The Cleveland Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (CADRC), led by James Leverenz, MD, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, is one of 31 NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers across the country. Established in 2019, the multi-institutional center—the only in Ohio—brings together top physicians and scientists from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, the MetroHealth System and University Hospitals, and supports a wide range of studies while also educating scientists, healthcare professionals and the public on the causes and treatment of dementias. 

The center has eight core areas led by experts across the participating institutions that work together to support the overall mission of the center, including: administration; biomarkers; clinical research and patient management; data management and statistics; neuropathology; outreach, recruitment and engagement; research education; and translational therapeutics.

“The CADRC biomarker team in Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute is very excited about this new funding that will enable many more years of CADRC-facilitated research,” said Lynn Bekris, PhD, who leads the Biomarker Core. “The study of biomarkers is needed to fully understand the complexity of dementia and inform personalized medicine-based treatments. As such, we are hard at work processing, cataloging, storing and sharing biospecimens as well as producing biomarker, genetic and epigenetic data to support innovative dementia research approaches for this collaborative effort.”

Particular areas of focus for the center are the study of atypical Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, healthy individuals at risk for developing dementia and increasing research participation among historically underserved populations. In addition to community outreach, the center has developed infrastructure and support to help investigators translate findings from the laboratory into the development of new therapeutics.

“Over the last two years, the CADRC has created a robust infrastructure to increase the speed of research efforts aimed at better understanding why the disease varies from person to person,” said Dr. Leverenz. “Ultimately, our collective goal is to contribute to a more personalized treatment approach for individuals with aging-associated brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.”

To learn more about the CADRC, please visit https://clevelandadrc.org/ or call 1-833-311- ADRC (2372).

Story adapted from Cleveland Clinic Newsroom.