Jessica Alber
University of Rhode Island, RI·Neuroscience
Alzheimer's disease damages the brain for years, even decades, before memory problems appear. That silent stage is likely the best window for treatment.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
preclinical Alzheimer's
retinal imaging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Identify differences in retinal imaging measures between older adults with preclinical Alzheimer's disease and cognitively unimpaired peers in the ARIAS cohort.
- Validate candidate retinal biomarkers against brain imaging, using amyloid PET scans to measure brain plaque buildup and 3T MRI to measure loss of brain tissue.
- Test whether retinal measures taken at the start of the study predict changes in brain imaging and cognition over three years of yearly follow-up visits.
- Explore whether combining retinal biomarkers with blood tests for the tau protein forms ptau231 and ptau181 improves accuracy in predicting Alzheimer's risk.
More about the research
Today, though, detecting it requires expensive brain scans, so few people are screened. The retina, the light-sensing tissue at the back of the eye, is part of the central nervous system. It can be photographed easily during a routine eye exam. This project asks whether changes in the retina can serve as a cheap, noninvasive "window to the brain" for early Alzheimer's risk.
Why it matters
If validated, retinal markers could let optometrists and ophthalmologists screen older adults for Alzheimer's risk during routine eye exams. People flagged as higher risk could then be referred for fuller evaluation. Combined with blood tests, this could provide affordable, population-wide screening. It could also help identify suitable candidates for emerging prevention therapies years before symptoms begin.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shannon Risacher
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience
Test whether changes in vision, smell and hearing in preclinical and prodromal Alzheimer's disease are driven by amyloid and tau buildup in the brain, measured by imaging, and by loss of brain tissue.
Jonathan McConathy
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience
Acquire amyloid-PET and tau-PET scans, which detect hallmark Alzheimer's protein deposits, and MRI scans from UAB Alzheimer's Disease Research Center participants using a simultaneous PET/MRI system.
Matthew D Grilli
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Test whether smartphone-tracked autobiographical thoughts in clinically normal older adults relate to plasma Alzheimer's biomarkers and to resting-state connectivity of the default network, brain regions targeted early in the disease.
The school
University of Rhode Island: 9 labs on PI Pages, $137M a year on research, 93 research doctorates a year.
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