Berkeley Gets $47M NIH Grant for Brain Imaging in Alzheimer’s Trial

By Fred Donovan

July 30, 2019 - University of California, Berkeley, has received a five-year, $47 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use brain imaging in the Alzheimer's Association's clinical trial, the U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk (U.S. POINTER).

The grant from NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA), will support the U.S. POINTER Neuroimaging Ancillary Study, which will use advanced brain imaging techniques to assess the biological effects of lifestyle changes on brain health, including overall and regional brain shape, size and blood flow, as well as on heart health risk and small vessel disease.

The imagining techniques that will be used include amyloid positron emission tomography (PET), tau PET, and magnetic resonance image (MRI) scans.

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U.S. POINTER is a $35 million Alzheimer's Association-led two-year clinical study to test whether lifestyle changes focused on healthy nutrition, physical activity, social and intellectual challenge, and increased medical monitoring of vascular and metabolic conditions can protect cognitive function in older adults who are at increased risk for cognitive decline later in life.

"A healthy diet and lifestyle are generally recognized as good for health, but U.S. POINTER is the first large randomized controlled trial to look at whether lifestyle changes actually influence Alzheimer's disease-related brain changes," said Susan Landau, Ph.D., a research neuroscientist at Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the principal investigator of the neuroimaging study.

"Lifestyle modification is a non-drug option that is accessible to people and may reduce the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's," added Landau.

Slightly more than half of U.S. POINTER participants (up to 1,250 out of 2,000) will be assessed with PET imaging at the start of the study and at two years to measure the buildup of amyloid and tau, two proteins whose accumulation in the brain has been linked to Alzheimer's dementia, and MRI at baseline, one year, and two years to measure the size of brain regions, identify lesions related to strokes or other vascular changes, and observe changes in brain blood flow.

"Brain markers of dementia, when measured at the beginning of the study, may predict who will respond best to the interventions, which could inform future precision medicine approaches to healthcare," concluded Landau.

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Berkeley Gets $47M NIH Grant for Brain Imaging in Alzheimer’s Trial

University of California, Berkeley, has received a five-year, $47 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to incorporate brain imaging into the Alzheimer's Association's clinical trial.

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