Building Research on Neurodegeneration and Developing Future Researchers: Jefferson Kinney, PhD

WATCH TIME: 3 minutes

"What we’ll do is maintain that cohort as well as some core resources that we built during phase 1. But in phase 2, we now add two more core resources to Southern Nevada to enhance research capability. Those are an imaging core as well as expansion of biomarker discovery as part of the Center for Neurodegeneration."

Recently, the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), announced a newly awarded grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund phase 2 of their first Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE), the Center for Neurodegeneration and Translational Neuroscience (CNTN). The grant, totaling $11.3 million, will be used towards developing the resources and processes necessary to achieve a long-term sustainable neuroscience research infrastructure.

Led by Aaron Ritter, MD, of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, and Jefferson Kinney, PhD, of UNLV, the 5-year continuation of the COBRE award aims more specifically to foster infrastructure development, develop biomarker, imaging and clinical research capabilities, develop careers for CNTN investigators, and stimulate research productivity. The grant will also help launch a pilot project program, which will allow an opportunity for researchers who aren’t a part of the center to capitalize on the resources available to ask their own questions.

Phase 2 builds upon the efforts of the 2 centers, which consisted of creating a Brain Imaging Department, creating a community advisory board to help recruit a diverse research participation population, and developing a research cohort, among others, during phase 1. Kinney, the founding chair of the Department of Brain Health in the School of Integrated Sciences at UNLV, sat down with NeurologyLive® to discuss the newly awarded grant, how it will be utilized, and how it expands on what was previously developed in phase 1.