ADRC Research

UCSF became a designated Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), directed by Dr. Bruce Miller, in 2004. The UCSF ADRC focuses on two basic research investigations -- one on Alzheimer’s disease, led by Dr. Lennart Mucke, the other on prion diseases, led by Nobel laureate Dr. Stanley B. Prusiner, UCSF professor of neurology and Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at UCSF. It also funds several smaller research projects concerning dementia and other forms of neurodegeneration.

Demonstrating the cross over between studies in animals and humans, Mucke will continue his investigation both in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease and in biological specimens from humans into the relationship between cognitive deficits and calcium-dependent proteins in two memory centers of the brain affected in Alzheimer’s disease, the hippocampus and dentate gyrus. He has already shown that one such protein, known as calbindin, is severely depleted in the dentate gyrus of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and in mouse models simulating this condition. In the mice, these molecular alterations strongly correlated with learning deficits, and preliminary results suggest that they may also correlate with the severity of dementia in humans.

In his ongoing work, Mucke and his coworkers will search for additional molecular markers and mediators of Alzheimer’s disease-related neurological deficits. They also plan to study why so many patients with this condition have a tendency to wander and are unable to find their way back home. If scientists understood the mechanisms that underlie this problem, he says, they might be able to identify ways to prevent patients from getting lost, which would spare the patients and their families a great deal of emotional turmoil.

“The functions of path-finding and returning to one’s home can be readily studied in Alzheimer mouse models, and the results of such studies could offer valuable insights into what goes wrong in humans with the disease,” says Mucke.

Prusiner, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering prion (PREE-on) protein, and determining that it has the susceptibility to be converted to a lethal form, known as a prion, will also carry out a study funded through the ADRC. The investigation is aimed at identifying the structure of a component of the normal protein that is believed to be central to the process by which the protein is converted to the disease causing form of the disease.

A study that will tap into the resources of the ADRC, though it will be funded by The Larry L. Hillblom Foundation, will be led by Dr. Aimee Kao, the chief resident of neurology at UCSF Medical Center Hospital. Illuminating the synergy being fostered by the new Center, Kao is seeing patients with dementia with Lewy Bodies. Subsequently, she will study a model of this disease in roundworms in the laboratory of Dr. Cynthia Kenyon, UCSF Herbert Boyer Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics.

If you are interested in learning more about the ADRC, the Cores and Projects are described and the various sites are listed in the About/Contact section. Information about the ADRC Investigators is found in the Staff section. See the Complete Listing for this project for more details.