About
A Center on Alpha-Synuclein Strains in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD)
The U19 Center and Penn biosample bank that the Penn team has developed over the past 20 years will be a valuable resource to other investigators beyond Penn who pursue research on amyloid polymorphisms and strain.
The Penn U19 Center innovates by elucidating mechanisms underlying the heterogeneous progression of cognitive impairment to dementia in LBD compared to AD+aSyn in addition to neurodegeneration mediated by progressive accumulation and cell-to-cell spread of pathological aSyn strains. Thus, the Penn U19 Center seeks to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie AD+aSyn/LBD heterogeneity. Together the Center Projects will work with the Center Cores to rigorously test the aSyn strain hypothesis from perspectives that span from individual patients to model systems of alpha-synucleinopathies including AD+aSyn and LBD. Finally, the Penn U19 Center is unique in that it will work with Austin Yang and other NIA Program officers to provide outside investigators new and existing banked biofluids, DNA/RNA, autopsy tissue and data collected from ADRD patients over the past 20 years and in this U19 Center in addition to aSyn strains through mechanisms described in Core A.
Information on available data and resources, as well as plans for sharing these resources, can be found on our Resources page.
OUR TEAM
- Alice Chen Plotkin, MD
- Daniel Weintraub, MD
- Rizwan Akhtar, MD, PhD
- David Irwin, MD
- Corey McMillan, PhD
- Paul Yuskevich, PhD
- David Wolk, MD
- Phil Cook, PhD
- Virginia M.-Y. Lee, PhD
- Kelvin Luk, PhD
- Kathy Jedrziewski, PhD
- Nabila Dahodwala, MD
- James Morley, MD, PhD
- Andrew Siderowf, MD
- Allison Willis, MD, MS
- Vivanna Van Deerlin, PhD
- Eddie Lee, MD, PhD
- Sharon Xie, PhD
- Li San Wang, PhD