Penn Udall Center Cores
The Penn Udall Center Team is divided into four cores, each responsible for a key area within the Center, and four project areas.
For more information about the Penn Udall Center's Cores and its leaders, click on the core below. For more details on the individual projects being pursued at the Penn Udall Center, click on Projects below.
Cores |
Projects |
| Functional Consequences | |
| Executive Difficulty | |
| Animal Models of Parkinson's Disease | |
| Interactions of Protein Aggregation |
Administrative Core
The Administrative Core of the Penn Udall Center serves the important function of facilitating the accomplishment of the goals of this multidisciplinary research program. The aims of Core A are to oversee budgetary and fiscal aspects of the Penn Udall Center, promote and foster interactions between Core and Project investigators as well as interactions of Udall Center investigators with scientists at and beyond Penn, monitor the progress of the Cores and Projects, facilitate the sharing of data/reagents/resources generated by Penn Udall Center investigators with other researchers in accordance with NIH policies, and participate in annual Udall Center meetings to accelerate the pace of advances in understanding Parkinson's disease (PD) and Parkinson's disease with dementia (PDD). By utilizing the strategies in these aims, Core A will play an important administrative role in the Penn Udall Center by fostering the accomplishment of its research goals.
| John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD | Core Leader | |
| Kathryn Jedrziewski, PhD | Deputy Core Leader, Administration |
Publications:
- Jedrziewski MK, Lee VM-Y, Trojanowski JQ. Physical activity and cognitive health. Alzheimer’s & Dementia, 3:98-108, 2007.
Clinical and Educational Core
The Clinical and Educational Core is responsible for recruiting patients with PD, including those with or without dementia, as well as normal control subjects. It is also leading the investigation into potential biomarkers of Parkinson’s-related neurodegeneration and conducting educational efforts for physicians and the lay community on the subjects of PD, PDD, and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB).
Particular efforts will be directed at outreach to minority and underserved populations in Philadelphia. Physician education efforts will include lectures and symposia for practicing physicians and healthcare providers on the diagnosis and management of Parkinson’s and cognitive disorders as well as the training of at least 3 movement disorder research fellows.
The primary mission of the Udall Center’s Clinical and Educational Core is to develop a cohort of patients with PD and normal controls. These individuals will participate in the Udall projects and help to advance the Penn Udall Center’s mission of understanding and finding better treatments for cognitive dysfunction associated with PD. The Core will also conduct educational programs and community outreach on the subjects of PD and related disorders. The Core will bring together over 200 patients with Parkinson’s disease who will receive detailed clinical and psychological evaluations on a yearly basis. Patients participating in the Core will be asked to contribute biological samples including blood, urine, and cerebro-spinal fluid. Brain autopsies will also be performed at the time of death. Taken together, this proposed collection of detailed clinical and biological materials will be a unique resource for the studies of the causes and possible treatments for PD and cognitive dysfunction associated with PD. The educational component will consist of outreach to the community, programs for healthcare providers to help them treat PD more effectively and education of a series of post-doctoral fellows.
| Howard Hurtig, MD | Core Leader and Principal Investigator | |
| Andrew Siderowf, MD, MSCE | Co-Core Leader |
Publications:
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Murray R, Neumann M, Forman MS, Farmer J, Massimo L, Rice A, Miller BL, Johnson JK, Clark CM, Hurtig HI, Gorno-Tempini ML, Lee VM, Trojanowski JQ, Grossman M. Cognitive and motor assessment in autopsy-proven corticobasal degeneration. Neurology. 68(16):1274-83, 2007.
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Lippa CF, Duda JE, Grossman M, Hurtig H, Aarsland D, Boeve B, Brooks DJ, Dickson DW, Dubois B, Emre M, Fahn S, Farmer J, Galasko D, Galvin JE, Goetz C, Growdon JH, Gwinn-Hardy KA, Hardy J, Heutink P, Iwatsubo T, Kosaka K, Lee VM-Y, Leverenz J, Masliah E, McKeith IE, Nussbaum RL, Olanow CW, Ravina BM, Singleton AB, Tanner CM, Trojanowski JQ, Wszolek ZK, DLB/PDD Working Group. DLB and PDD boundary issues: Diagnosis, treatment, molecular pathology and biomarkers. Neurol., 68:812-819, 2007.
- Weintraub D, Hurtig H. Presentation and Management of Psychosis in Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia with Lewy Bodies. Am J Psych (in press).
Neuropathology and Genetics Core
The Neuropathology and Genetics Core acquires, preserves, and characterizes postmortem brain tissue and biological samples collected antemortem from clinically assessed control subjects as well as from patients with PD, PDD, DLB, and Lewy Body Variant of Alzheimer’s Disease (LBVAD).
PD, PDD, DLB, and LBVAD represent a spectrum of overlapping neurodegenerative disorders known as alpha-synucleinopathies that are characterized by prominent central nervous system lesions. These lesions are formed by filamentous alpha-synuclein aggregates mainly in neurons or their processes referred to as Lewy bodies (LBs) and Lewy neuritis (LNs). Further, LBVAD, the most common variant of AD, manifests with neuropathological features of both AD and PDD/DLB.
Our emphasis here will be on implementing proposed postmortem diagnostic criteria for PDD/DLB using state-of-the-art methods while also assessing the utility of other antemortem diagnostic methodology - including both biochemical analysis of biomarkers in biological fluids and molecular genetic strategies. This Core will play a critical role in evaluating current antemortem diagnoses, improving current diagnostic methods, and providing samples of fresh, unfixed frozen and fixed brain tissues that have been thoroughly characterized to investigators at the Udall Centers for research.
| John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD | Core Leader | |
| Vivianna van Deerlin, MD, PhD | Core Co-Investigator |
Publications:
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Chen-Plotkin A, Yuan W, Anderson C, McCarty-Wood E, Hurtig HI, Lee VM-Y, Trojanowski JQ, Grossman M, Van Deerlin, V. Frontotemporal dementia as a manifestation of two different LRRK2 gene mutations. Neurol., In press, 2007.
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Goker-Alpan O, Giasson BI, Eblan MJ, Nguyen J, Hurtig HI, Lee VM-Y, Trojanowski JQ, Sidranskey E. Glucocerebrosidase mutations are an important risk factor for Lewy body disorders. Neurol, 67:908-910, 2006.
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Nakashima-Yasuda H, Uryu K, Robinson J, Xie SX, Hurtig H, Duda J, Leverenz JB, Lopez O, Hamilton R, Tsuang DW, Galasko D, Masliah E, Kaye J, Woltjer R, Clark CM, Montine TJ, Lee VM-Y, Trojanowski JQ. Co-morbidity of TDP-43 Proteinopathy in Lewy body diseases. Acta Neuropathol, In press, 2007.
- Shaw LM, Korecka M, Clark CM, Lee VM.-Y, Trojanowski JQ. Biomarkers of neurodegenertaion for diagnosis and monitoring therapeutics. Nat Rev Drug Discovery, 6:295-303, 2007.
Data Management and Biostatistics Core
This Core will provide needed support for data form/questionnaire design and development, database development and management, data entry, database audit, security, backup and stringent data quality control procedures. It will ultimately work to establish a comprehensive and standardized relational database for the Penn Udall Center with demographic, clinical, genetic, biomarker, and neuropathology data. This important information will be integrated into the Penn Neurodegenerative Disease database, which draws data from the Penn Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Penn Memory Center, and the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research.
| Sharon Xie, PhD | Core Leader |
Publications:
- Clark CM, Pratico D, Shaw L, Leight S, Xie S, Gu A, Lee V-M, Trojanowski JQ. Biochemical biomarkers of late-life dementia. Alzheimer’s & Dementia,2:287-293, 2006.