Environmental Impacts on Neurodegeneration: A recap of the IOA's Sylvan M. Cohen Annual Retreat, co-sponsored by Penn Center for Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET)
By Nicolette Calcavecchia
Environmental Impacts on Neurodegeneration
As our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases grows, it becomes increasingly clear that the environment can play a significant role in brain health. From air pollution to chemicals in everyday products, environmental factors may be influencing the onset and progression of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other forms of dementia. Bringing together leading experts in their fields, the Institute on Aging (IOA) and Penn Center for Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET) tackled this topic co-hosting this year’s Sylvan M. Cohen Annual Retreat and Poster Session.
Read about some of the topics covered below:
"Exposure…
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Meet the speakers of the 2025 Sylvan M. Cohen Annual Retreat
By Nicolette Calcavecchia
Join the Institute on Aging on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 for the Sylvan M. Cohen Annual Retreat and Poster Session. This year's retreat, "Environmental Impacts on Neurodegeneration" is co-sponsored by Penn's Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology (CEET).
Event details
Date: March 11, 2025
Time: 8:30am - 4:30pm
Location: Biomedical Research Building, BRB Auditorium & Lobby
Keynote Speakers:
Eva-Maria Collins, PhD
Associate Professor in Biology, Swarthmore College
Eva-Maria Collins, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Biology at Swarthmore College, an Adjunct Associate Professor in Neuroscience at the Perelman School of Medicine at the…
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IOA Member Spotlight: J. Margo Brooks Carthon, PhD, RN, FAAN - Advancing Health Equity for Vulnerable Older Adults Through Innovative Models of Care
By Nicolette Calcavecchia
J. Margo Brooks Carthon, PhD, RN, FAAN, Tyson Family Endowed Term Chair for Gerontological Research at Penn Nursing, is a researcher and scholar whose work focuses on advancing health equity through innovative models of care for vulnerable older adults.
Dr. Brooks Carthon says her experience as a nurse and nurse practitioner working in community settings inspired her interest in pursuing health equity as a focus for her research. “In these settings, it was clear to me that the health care system can be very challenging for many patients to navigate, particularly members of historically minoritized groups,†she explained. “Through my…
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Primary and Secondary Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease: Dr. Jessica Langbaum shares the latest from the field
By Nicolette Calcavecchia
As the senior director research strategy at the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (BAI) and the director of the Arizona Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Dr. Jessica Langbaum’s research often centers around Alzheimer’s disease prevention trials, with an eye towards primary prevention strategies.
Her and her colleagues work designing and conducting Alzheimer’s prevention trials, especially those within the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative (API) – a collaborative effort established by BAI to launch a new era in Alzheimer’s prevention research and accelerate the evaluation and approval of prevention therapies -- has been pivotal in exploring how interventions might delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer's…
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Penn Researchers among those awarded $11 Million NIH Grant to Study Link between Chemical Exposure and Dementia Risk
By Nicolette Calcavecchia
Credit: Penn Medicine News
To better understand how day-to-day exposures to chemicals earlier in life can contribute to conditions like Alzheimer's disease later on, researchers are examining four decades worth of data from a 5,000-person sample looking at blood and urine tests to measure levels of pesticides, metals, and other elements and comparing those with MRI scans and cognitive tests to determine what could potentially contribute to increased risk of neurological disorders. The research, which is a collaboration between investigators at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, University of California San Francisco, and Emory University,…
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