Brown University to open new center for Alzheimer's research

PROVIDENCE — Brown University is opening a $30-millionResearch Center for Alzheimer’s Disease. Its goal is to bring together scientists from many disciplines to study the early detection and treatment of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

Two anonymous donors made gifts totaling $30 million that made the center possible.

By linking scientific and clinical work across disciplines, the center hopes to create a program with the aim of changing the trajectory of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Brown President Christina H. Paxson said that with devastating consequences of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia impacting more families every year, the university will bring the full force of its medical and brain science expertise to speed up new treatments.

“It puts us in the big leagues,” said Dr. Stephen Salloway, associate director of the Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at Brown. “We’ve already been playing a big role in setting up a new fluid biomarker lab whose key goal is to develop blood tests [for early detection]. We have a number of tests that very promising. We hope to use them in the clinic soon.”

A blood test for Alzheimer’s would make diagnosis more widely available and economical. Brown is starting a collaboration with a group in Sweden to test these blood tests in individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s, he said.

Brown will hire faculty to make sense of all of the data, a field called bioinfomatics. A position will reserved for a faculty member in neuro-immunology, who will study how proteins build up in the brain and trigger the immune system to over-react.

“These would be people with medical training in neurology and with a science background in applying research to inflammatory changes in the brain,” Salloway said.

Brown has hired Diane Lipscombe, a professor of neuroscience at the university who leads the Carney Institute, as acting director of the center.

“The aim of the new center is to convene that expertise at Brown,” she said. “Ultimately, our work will contribute to a more thorough understanding of the most fundamental mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration, which will enable earlier diagnosis as well as the creation of treatments that will not just slow degeneration but also prevent it.”

Lipscombe has directed Brown’s brain science institute since 2016.

Salloway said his team's goal has always been to open the modern era for the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s so that someone could get an early diagnosis and receive treatment that prevents or slows the progress of the disease.

Treatment would be tailored to to the individual, much like doctors do with cancer.

Salloway, a professor of neurology and psychiatry, will serve as the associate director of the center, overseeing clinical research.

Linda Borg covers education for the Journal.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Brown University to open new center for Alzheimer's research

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