New Mexico Alzheimer's Disease Research Center

PROJECT SUMMARY - OVERALL The New Mexico Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (NM ADRC) is strategically and geographically positioned in an area of the country with an extremely diverse and underserved population that has limited access to health and dementia care. With funding from the NIH for the prior P20 exploratory ADRC, we established an

infrastructure and formed partnerships to improve dementia care in rural communities of New Mexico and provided them an opportunity to be part of the national network of ADRC centers formed to meet the crisis in AD/ADRD. The NM ADRC is built on years of experience of research on biomarkers to identify vascular

contributions to Alzheimer’s and inflammation. We have studied the impact of inflammation and blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption as key mechanisms of disease. We have a strong track record of multi-consortium studies through RO1 and MarkVCID grants. This proposal for a NM ADRC is to establish a fully integrated ADRC

in New Mexico, a frontier state with a high proportion of minorities without access to dementia diagnosis and treatment. We plan to collaborate with other ADRCs and identify novel risk factors driving dementia in underserved Hispanic/Latino (H/L) and American Indian (AI) communities. We will work on-site in the remote

areas, such as Zuni and Acoma Pueblos, with the use of a mobile MRI scanner and community health representatives. The large Hispanic/Latino populations in the state will be engaged in the Outreach, Recruitment, and Engagement (ORE) Core. The UNM Center for Memory and Aging uses Biomarkers to change the way we

diagnosis, classify and treat adults with cognitive impairment. The Biomarker fluid core can test for biomarkers in plasma that will make large scale screening to identify patients at risk for AD/ADRD in the rural population. The Neuroimaging Core can determine the presence of vascular disease by diffusion tensor imaging of white

matter, and the Biomarker Core can measure proteins associated with inflammation and neurodegeneration in the blood, improving patient classification. Scientifically, the NM ADRC will be at the cutting-edge in developing novel neuroimaging and fluid-based biomarkers that help distinguish different types of dementia at an early stage

and accurately classify them for future clinical trials. New cores and components in the NM ADRC for Neuropathology, Outreach, Recruitment, and Engagement, and Research Education will provide New Mexico with expanded resources for dementia care, training, and research that will benefit AD researchers in the state.

We plan to accomplish this under four specific overall aims: Specific Aim 1: Recruit and retain a large cohort of older individuals with cognitive disabilities, particularly those in the medically underserved minority communities. Specific Aim 2: Improve classification of the heterogeneous dementia patient population with plasma-based

biomarkers that have been developed as part of the NMeADRC and MarkVCID consortium. Specific Aim 3: Study the role of vascular disease and inflammation in the pathogenesis of AD and multi etiology dementia. Specific Aim 4: Train the next generation of healthcare workers from diverse H/L and AI communities.