THE PROJECT
The project
This project fosters a Consortium with support from multiple partners whose goal is to expand dementia research in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The Consortium aims to combine genomic, neuroimaging and behavioral (clinical, cognitive, socioeconomic) data to improve dementia characterization and identify novel inroads to treat neurodegeneration in diverse populations. This 5-year project constitutes an unprecedented opportunity to foster regional synergy and multidisciplinary research to promote harmonization of global strategies to treat and, ultimately, prevent dementia in diverse and underserved populations around the world. We will develop an innovative, harmonized, and cross-regional approach on two of their most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
We combine R01 funding (“US-South American initiative for genetic-neural-behavioral interactions in human neurodegenerative research”, R01 AG057234) with additional support. The R01 project provides a basic platform anchored in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, that is supplemented with clinical research expertise from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Memory and Aging Center, genomics expertise from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and bioinformatics infrastructure and expertise from HudsonAlpha. Then other countries (Mexico, Chile and others from the LAC-CD consortium) joined the project with the support of the Alzheimer’s Association and the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. Satellite projects are now expanding the initial ReDLat initiative to include family assessments (Alector, Bluefield), EEG recordings (Takeda), natural speech analysys (NIH/NIA) and learning experiences (BrainLat, GBHI).
This project fosters a Consortium with support from multiple partners whose goal is to expand dementia research in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The Consortium aims to combine genomic, neuroimaging and behavioral (clinical, cognitive, socioeconomic) data to improve dementia characterization and identify novel inroads to treat neurodegeneration in diverse populations. This 5-year project constitutes an unprecedented opportunity to foster regional synergy and multidisciplinary research to promote harmonization of global strategies to treat and, ultimately, prevent dementia in diverse and underserved populations around the world. We will develop an innovative, harmonized, and cross-regional approach on two of their most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
We combine R01 funding (“US-South American initiative for genetic-neural-behavioral interactions in human neurodegenerative research”, R01 AG057234) with additional support. The R01 project provides a basic platform anchored in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, that is supplemented with clinical research expertise from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Memory and Aging Center, genomics expertise from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and bioinformatics infrastructure and expertise from HudsonAlpha. Then other countries (Mexico, Chile and others from the LAC-CD consortium) joined the project with the support of the Alzheimer’s Association and the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. Satellite projects are now expanding the initial ReDLat initiative to include family assessments (Alector, Bluefield), EEG recordings (Takeda), natural speech analysys (NIH/NIA) and learning experiences (BrainLat, GBHI).
This proposal is extended to collaborators in Mexico and Chile. We also will assess novel families across LAC via the Latin America and Caribbean consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD). In addition to the R01 strategy based on patients with familial and sporadic presentations tested for genetic risks (risk scores), it would also support recruitment of AD and FTD families with an autosomal dominant-like presentation from the LAC-CD. This platform will facilitate numerous research projects from additional groups of the LAC-CD; leverage regional expertise in aging and dementia to establish a multidisciplinary, collaborative consortium of diverse, international clinicians and researchers; and promote the development of the next generation of aging and dementia investigators in LAC. In this expanded framework, we would first screen all patients for known AD/FTD/ALS genes and then, for those who screen negative for known genetic causes of disease, we will perform whole-genome sequencing (WGS) for gene discovery. By leveraging the R01 efforts and extending the project scope to include Mexico, Chile, and novel families from LAC-CD, we will establish a network of AD and FTD families and clinicians/researchers, enabling large-scale research to identify novel genetic and SES contributions to AD and FTD in diverse populations. By establishing this collaborative framework, which capitalizes on unique regional populations, our proposal can consolidate a LAC-based platform for future translational research and assessment. Our long-term goal is to identify the unique genetic and SES factors that drive AD and FTD presentation in LAC relative to the US, including risk factors, cognitive profiles and brain imaging. To this end, we will establish a first-in-class cohort anchored in six LAC (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru), compared to US samples (totaling > 4200 participants, including 2100 controls, 1050 AD patients, and 1050 FTD patients), led by world-renowned leaders in dementia research. We will couple standardized clinical assessments with innovative analytical techniques to account for heterogeneity in these diverse populations. By combining standardized genetic, neuroimaging, and behavioral (cognitive and SES) measures, we will test the underlying hypothesis that there are unique risk factors for AD and FTD in LAC (e.g., genetic risk factors enriched in LAC populations; underlying cognitive and neural vulnerability due to SES) compared to US populations. Our plan to recruit large numbers of controls and patients across these diverse populations will provide excellent opportunities to identify new genetic and SES risks for AD and FTD. In addition, the machine learning strategies we have developed to reduce the impact of background heterogeneity will allow us to refine the accuracy of our association studies. In this context, we will pursue the following Specific Aims:
Aim 1: To establish genetic contributions to AD and FTD in diverse LAC cohorts (Tier 1 study, with larger sample size than Tier 2). By elucidating the genetic substructure and familial contributions to AD and FTD in LAC relative to the US, we will be able to identify proper populations for replication of our genetic findings. By assembling this large cohort, we will also be well positioned to establish a LAC-specific polygenic risk score (PRS) for predicting AD and FTD risk in future samples.
1. To identify the prevalence of autosomal dominant and rare variant risk factors for AD and FTD in target genes.
We hypothesize that, relative to the US, LAC have a higher frequency of familial forms of AD and FTD. Discovery of new families with multiple affected individuals will advance efforts to treat AD and FTD in patients with rare mutations (PS1, APP, MAPT, GRN, and C9orf72).
2. To perform exploratory genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in LAC subpopulations.
We hypothesize that, relative to US patients, LAC are enriched for novel risk in genes for lipid metabolism (AD) and lysosomal function (FTD).
3. To test whether PRS developed in European AD and FTD populations prove valid in LAC.
We hypothesize that PRS will work best at discriminating patients from controls in the European predominant subpopulation (US and, to a lesser extent, Argentina, Chile) than in the African and Indigenous-majority admixed cohorts (Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico).
Aim 2: To elucidate the impact of SES on clinical, cognitive, and brain imaging signatures in LAC and the US. (Tier 2 study-comprehensive imaging and cognitive evaluation in a subset of Tier 1). To compare patients across regions, we need to establish standardized neurocognitive measures and understand how SES impacts the manifestations of dementia in LAC.
1. To evaluate how SES moderates the relationship between age at onset and disease severity in AD and FTD.
We hypothesize that AD and FTD will emerge at an earlier age in low-SES vs. high-SES (dichotomized) patients, and measures of disease severity, including cognitive performance, and multimodal neuroimaging, will be worse in the low-SES group even after accounting for age.
2. To assess the differential impact of SES on clinical, cognitive and brain imaging deficits in LAC vs. US samples.
We hypothesize that difference in disease severity ratings, cognition, and multimodal neuroimaging that reflect low vs. high SES disparities will be greater in LAC patients compared to US patients.
Aim 3: To determine whether genetic risk and SES yield better discrimination between LAC and US patients as compared with other cognitive, neuroimaging, and clinical variables (Tier 1 & 2). To date, no study has sought to establish which potential predictors prove more sensitive to discriminate between LAC and US patients. In particular, although genetic risk and SES (Aims 1 and 2) have the potential to robustly differentiate between such samples, no study has explored their role, let alone as compared to other multimodal factors. To address this issue, we will apply data-driven machine-learning analysis to determine top factors that best discriminate patients in LAC from those in the US. Multimodal measures from controls of each country will be used for population-specific normalization of patient data. We hypothesize that the top features, better discriminating LAC from US patients will be related to SES and genetic risk (e.g., standardized PRS) in comparison to other variables (clinical, cognitive, and imaging measures).
The expected outcome of this study is a large Latin American cohort of harmonized, well-characterized AD and FTD patients and controls (Fig 1). Positive impacts of this work include a better understanding of genetic and SES contributions to neurocognitive manifestations of dementia and identification of novel targets for risk reduction and disease prevention in LAC. Our large multimodal, cross-sectional study will enable clinical assessment of understudied patient groups, extend and harmonize existing data sets, prompt the development of novel measures, and inform future work on the clinical value of combined multimodal profiles to predict disease presentation and progression in longitudinal studies of diverse populations.
Marilu Gorno Tempini
BIO
Dr. Maria Luisa Gorno Tempini is a behavioral neurologist and holds the Charles Schwab Endowed Professorship in Dyslexia and Neurodevelopment. She currently directs the Language Neurobiology Laboratory at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and co-directs the UCSF Dyslexia Center. She obtained her medical degree and clinical neurology specialty training in Italy and has a doctorate in the neuroimaging of language from University College London.
Her clinical work concentrates on behavioral neurology across the lifespan, and her research investigates the neural basis of higher cognitive functions such as language and memory. Dr. Gorno Tempini has applied her expertise in cognitive neurology to neurodegenerative diseases, particularly primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and to language-based learning differences, such as dyslexia. In 2011, Dr. Gorno Tempini’s NIH-funded research resulted in new diagnostic criteria for PPA and its variants.
In 2014, Dr. Gorno Tempini co-founded the UCSF Dyslexia Center, which aims to classify dyslexia into behavioral phenotypes defined by patterns of neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses. These efforts will lead to more targeted assessments and treatments amongst clinical and educational systems. The UCSF Dyslexia Center brings together neurologists, psychiatrists, biomedical engineers, radiologists, neuropsychologists, speech-language pathologists and research coordinators to discover structural and functional differences in the brains of children and older adults with dyslexia.
Dr. Gorno Tempini leads many projects at UCSF and is funded by the NIH and various philanthropic sources. She is particularly dedicated to mentoring and was awarded an NIH K24 grant to mentor interdisciplinary researchers in the field of clinical cognitive neuroscience.
Bruce Miller
BIO
Bruce L. Miller, MD, holds the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professorship in Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and is a director of the Global Brain Health Institute. He is the principal investigator of the NIH-sponsored UCSF Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and program project grant on frontotemporal dementia. In addition, he helps lead the Tau Consortium and The Bluefield Foundation, precision medicine collaborations focused on developing treatments for tauopathies and progranulin-mediated forms of frontotemporal dementia.
Miller is a behavioral neurologist who studies the underlying mechanisms of neurocognitive disorders and is a world-renowned expert in the diagnosis and management of dementia. Until recently, most cases of dementia were classified as Alzheimer’s disease with little awareness of the importance of non-Alzheimer dementias. Miller’s description of changes in behavior, language and emotion in the setting of aging have improved the separation of various neurodegenerative diseases from one another, in particular Alzheimer’s disease from frontotemporal dementia. To support people after diagnosis, Miller has pioneered groundbreaking changes in the provision of care coordination for patients with dementia and their caregivers. His ongoing work includes overseeing a healthy aging program and an artist in residence program, both of which emphasize positive aspects of aging.
Miller has been featured in Fortune Magazine, The New York Times, 60 Minutes and the PBS Newshour. He has authored more than 1000 publications and written The Human Frontal Lobes, The Behavioral Neurology of Dementia, Frontotemporal Dementia and Finding the Right Words, a book on Alzheimer’s disease from the perspective of a daughter written with Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health Cynthia Weinstein, PhD. He has received many awards including the Potamkin Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the Elliot Royer Award from the San Francisco Neurological community, the Robert A. Fishman Award and Lecture, and the UCSF Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Miller’s extensive knowledge in clinical diagnosis, disease pathology, and brain-behavior relationships make him a widely sought-after teacher and mentor. He founded the Behavioral Neurology Fellowship at UCSF, oversees visits of more than 50 foreign scholars every year, and co-directs the Global Brain Health Institute, a training program for global leaders in brain health to reduce the scale and impact of dementia around the world. These international collaborations have fostered the development of new prevention and therapeutic approaches and have pushed researchers worldwide toward a more precise understanding of frontotemporal dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Valcour Victor
BIO
Dr. Valcour is a Professor of Medicine with a shared appointment in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and the Department of Neurology. His work crosses disciplines to research and care for cognitive disorders in aging populations and to understand brain injury in the setting of HIV among all ages, including funded pediatric HIV studies. His clinical work involves consultations for patients with cognitive disorders at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center.
While much of Dr. Valcour’s research is completed at UCSF, he has a large international portfolio with many opportunities for junior investigators. Within Southeast Asia, he is Deputy Director of SEARCH/Thailand operating research in acute HIV (within days of infection), pediatric HIV, and markers of dementia in chronic HIV. In Africa, he has partnered with the US Military HIV Research Program to survey cognitive disorders among HIV-infected individuals in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.
Dr. Valcour is broadly involved in mentoring individuals at all levels of training who are interested in clinical research related to cognitive disorders, particularly in association with HIV infection. He has extensive global health experience.
Dr. Valcour’s research interests have two major emphases. He is currently developing a research program that aims to understand optimal care strategies for elders who develop dementia. Nested within the Memory and Aging Center, the long-term goal of this program is to provide model care for elders with cognitive disorders.
Dr. Valcour is internationally recognized for research in cognitive disorders related to HIV. He currently operates 3 NIH R01 series grants within 3 novel cohorts: (1) a chronic HIV infected cohort followed since first initiation of cART; (2) an acute HIV cohort of individuals infected for less than one month at enrollment; (3) and a pediatric cohort in Thailand and Cambodia. He is the Deputy Director of SEARCH/Thailand
(www.SEARCHThailand.org). He also operates the UCSF HIV Over 60 Cohort focused on understanding cognitive disorders in the older HIV population living in the San Francisco Bay area. New research will survey of cognitive disorders in HIV for individuals living in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria.
Dr. Valcour is actively engaged in mentoring individuals wishing to become independent clinical researchers. His research portfolio provides a broad array of local and international projects that can serve as resources for mentored projects. Dr. Valcour serves as an Executive Committee member of the AIDS Research Institute (ARI).
Shireen Javandel
BIO
Shireen coordinates the HIV research program at the Memory and Aging Center, including a number of domestic and international protocols focused on studying the impact of HIV infection on cognition. She also supports the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health and faculty within the Global Brain Health Institute to facilitate research studies aiming to understand neurodegeneration and test strategies to reduce the global impact of dementia.
Shireen previously worked in education, coordinating work-place-based mentorships for underserved middle school students. She earned a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cell biology from UC Berkeley and a post-baccalaureate certificate in Interdepartmental Medical Sciences from Drexel University. She has worked at the Memory and Aging Center since 2014.
Jennifer Yokoyama
BIO
Jennifer Yokoyama obtained her doctorate degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics from UCSF in December 2010 with Dr. Steven Hamilton (Department of Psychiatry and Institute for Human Genetics). Her dissertation comprised work within the Canine Behavioral Genetics Project, utilizing purebred dogs as genetic models for studying neuropsychiatric disease. Utilizing community-based canine DNA samples, Dr. Yokoyama performed genome-wide surveys for genetic loci underlying the canine anxiety disorder noise phobia, as well as for loci underlying adult-onset deafness in border collies.
Dr. Yokoyama is currently an Associate Professor at the Memory and Aging Center, where she is beginning a research program in neurogenetics of aging. Specifically, she is interested in the effect genotype can have on brain physiology, behavior and cognition in healthy older adults, and how this is related to increased vulnerability to (or protection from) neurodegenerative processes during aging. She is also particularly interested in understanding these effects in diverse ethnic populations. Dr. Yokoyama’s long-term goal is to understand how variation across the entire genome confers risk for particular types of neurodegeneration for purposes of early treatment and therapeutic intervention.
In 2020, Dr. Yokoyama received the Alzheimer’s Association Excellence in Neuroscience Mentoring Award in recognition of her mentorship, advocacy, sponsorship and guidance of trainees in her laboratory. And in 2021, she received the Mary Oakley Foundation Professorship in Neurodegeneration.
Katherine Possin
BIO
Dr. Possin’s research program is focused on improving the detection, diagnosis and care for people with neurodegenerative disease. She has long-standing interests in understanding the cognitive impairments and their neural bases in neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body disease, Huntington’s disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. She is the project lead of TabCAT, a software platform for tablet-based cognitive testing frequently used in research studies and clinical services. The Brain Health Assessment is a 10-minute assessment on TabCAT designed for the detection of cognitive impairment in everyday clinical settings. She also the principal investigator of the Care Ecosystem, a telephone-based supportive care program for persons with dementia and their caregivers. Dr. Possin is a faculty member at the Global Brain Health Institute.
Kate Possin was awarded her PhD degree in clinical psychology from the University of California, San Diego. During her training at UCSD, she studied cognitive changes associated with Parkinson’s disease. She completed her internship in clinical neuropsychology at UC San Francisco in the departments of psychiatry and neurology and did her postdoctoral fellowship in the UCSF Department of Neurology. She currently holds the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professorship and is an associate professor in residence in the Department of Neurology.
Dr. Possin is accepting applications for a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology and a postdoctoral fellowship in dementia healthcare innovation.
Natália Vieira
BIO
Natália Vieira is an international student from Brazil in her first year as a master’s student in the cell and molecular biology program at San Francisco State University. Her project is a partnership between the Health & Equity Research Lab at SF State and the Yokoyama Lab at UCSF.
She is currently studying Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in an admixed cohort, trying to predict the age of onset of AD. In addition to this research project, she is a member of the ReDLat team at UCSF. She is responsible for reviewing sample shipment manifests and managing shipping authorizations.
Nick Cochran
BIO
Dr. Nick Cochran obtained his undergraduate degree in 2010 from Auburn University where he conducted research with Douglas Martin, his PhD in neuroscience from UAB in 2015 where we trained with Erik Roberson, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 2021 with Richard Myers at HudsonAlpha before continuing on as a Faculty Investigator at HudsonAlpha. Throughout his career, Nick has focused on contributing to research on Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. Current Cochran lab projects focus on: (1) right-sizing both genetic association studies in underrepresented populations and applying functional genomics approaches in a manner relevant to underrepresented populations to properly capture how genetic diversity both at the individual and population levels could influence the effects of genetic variation, (2) obtaining a detailed understanding of the regulation of neurodegeneration-associated genes to propose new therapeutic approaches, and (3) working towards a higher level of evidence for non-coding variation (with a focus on rare non-coding variation) to provide a toolbox to understand disease risk.
Ken Kosik
BIO
Kenneth S. Kosik, M.A. M.D. served as professor at the Harvard Medical School from 1996 until 2004 when he became the Harriman Professor and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB. His awards include Whitaker Health Sciences Award (MIT), Milton Foundation Award (Harvard Medical School), Moore Award (American Association of Neuropathologists), Metropolitan Life Award, Derek Denny-Brown Award (American Neurological Association), Zenith and Temple Awards (Alzheimer’s Association), Ranwell Caputo Medal (Argentine Society of Neurochemistry), NASA Group Achievement Award to Neurolab Team, the Premio Aventis (Academia Nacional de Medicina, Colombia), Potamkin Prize for Research in Pick’s, Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases (2021), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Santa Barbara Innovation Star Award.
He co-authored Outsmarting Alzheimer’s Disease and The Alzheimer’s Solution: How Today’s Care is Failing Millions and How We Can Do Better. His work on Tau pathology and his work in Colombia with the largest family in the world afflicted with familial Alzheimer’s has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, BBC, CNN, PBS and CBS 60 Minutes. His 2016 University of California Santa Barbara commencement address archived at the Graduation Wisdom Best Commencement Speeches web site is here:
Nilton Custodio
BIO
Dr. Nilton Custodio is a neurologist interested in global approaches to neurodegenerative diseases with special interest in vulnerable (low education) and native (Aymara and Quechua) populations. He is medical director of the Peruvian Institute of Neurosciences. He trained as a clinical neurologist, obtained a Master’s degree in Medicine and a PhD in Neurosciences from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (FAAN) since 2017. He has been president of the Peruvian Society of Neurology.
He has contributed to more than 100 scientific publications in high impact journals and is associate editor of different journals. In the last 5 years, he has obtained research funding from different international associations such as Alzheimer’s Association, National Institute of Health/National Institute of Aging, and MRC (UK).
He is a founding member of the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD) and of important regional initiatives, such as the Multi-partner Consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat), Genetics in Alzheimer’s Peruvian Population (GAPP), Iniciativa Latinoamericana de intervención para prevenir el deterioro cognitivo (LatAm fingers) and Innovations using mHealth for People with Dementia and Co-Morbidity and their Carers (IMPACT).
Elisa Resende
BIO
Elisa Resende received her medical school training from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil. She received her PhD in Neuroscience at the same University. Elisa did her residency in Neurology at the Hospital das Clínicas-UFMG/EBSERH. After one year of fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Movement Disorders, she joined the hospital staff as assistant physician. She is an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health and teaches behavioral neurology at Faculdade de Medicina de Ciências Médicas de Minas Gerais
Leonel Takada
BIO
Dr. Takada is a behavioral neurologist, trained at University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and at UCSF Memory and Aging Center, USA (as a visiting scholar). He obtained his PhD in 2015, in which he studied monogenic forms of FTD in Brazil. His main research interests are monogenic forms of early-onset dementia (particularly AD and FTD) and the development of apps to improve quality of life in patients with mild cognitive impairment and dementia.
Maira Okada
BIO
Graduated in Psychology from Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Master and PhD in Sciences from the Department of Neurology at HCFMUSP, specialist in Neuropsychology, Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Heath at GBHI. She is currently a researcher at the Cognitive and Behavior Neurology Group (GNCC) at HCFMUSP and at the Cognitive Disorders Reference Center (CEREDIC) at HCFMUSP, Neuropsychologist at Hospital Santa Marcelina, member of ReD-Lat project and associated editor of Dementia & Neuropsychologia Journal.
https://lattes.cnpq.br/6934310043474462
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8423-9876
National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán (Mexico)
Jose Alberto Avila-Funes
BIO
Dr. Avila-Funes (MD, PhD) is an undergraduate and graduate professor of geriatrics and his main line of research is frailty and cognitive decline. He is a researcher associate of the ACTIVE team (U1219) of the INSERM (France).
He is a member of the national system of researchers and of the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico as well as the Latin American Academy of Medicine for the Older Adults.
He is currently the leader of the geriatric service at the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán in Mexico City.
Stefanie Piña Escudero
BIO
Stefanie Piña Escudero is an graduated as an MD from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She became a specialist in Internal Medicine at the Nuevo Sanatorio Durango and in Geriatrics at the the National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition Salvador Zubirán. She is an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.
She is currently pursuing a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics at the University of California, San Francisco. Co-founder of the MUGER group (Women in Geriatrics in Mexico). She currently works as Protocol Director of the RedLat Project.
Francisco Javier Lopera Restrepo
BIO
Dr. Lopera is a physician, neurologist and professor at the University of Antioquia with a subspecialty in neuropediatrics from the Catholic University of Louvain. As a medical resident in the 1980’s, he was led by curiosity to spend many weekends visiting small towns to speak to patients suffering from dementia without realizing that he would eventually map the world’s largest population with early onset familial Alzheimer’s linked to a mutation in the presenilin 1 gene. Dr. Lopera’s friendly, charismatic personality earned him the trust of patients and families, an accomplishment that has been as important as the science behind this story.
As Chief of the Neuroscience Group of Antioquia (GNA), he and his lab investigate neurodegenerative diseases and treat patients with Alzheimer’s Disease, CADASIL, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Frontotemporal Dementia and other forms of dementia. He is the principal investigator of the first preventive clinical trial in Colombia for Alzheimer’s disease called API Colombia. His work has been instrumental in gaining the recognition and funding for the creation of an International Center for Clinical Trials in Medellin which will be inaugurated in 2022. He has received numerous awards, including the Alejandro Ángel Escobar Award for exact, physical and natural sciences in 1997 and 2013; and the Bengt Winblad Lifetime Achievement Award by the Alzheimer’s Association in 2020.
Diana Matallana
BIO
Psychologist with graduate studies in Experimental Neuropsychology. Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Faculty of Medicine, in Bogotá-Colombia since 1986. Currently Full Professor since 2008. Main experience field is as a clinical Neuropsychologist and researcher focused on studies directed to understand cognition in normal aging driving population studies that include mental health social cognition domains. Along with the later, sequelae of neurological, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases such as early onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and non-AD dementias, mostly Frontotemporal dementia FTD, are her main areas of research and clinical practice. Since 1992, along with her colleagues, created the Memory and Cognition Clinic Center (MCC-Intellectus) at the University San Ignacio´s Hospital of the Javeriana University. Today at that center more than 45 new subjects, a week, go under an interdisciplinary consensus-based diagnosis and management board. Since 2008, until today, she has had the opportunity to investigate early onset FTD dementia trough University, and two Fogarty Grants, have allowed her to lead the early identification of interesting genetics associated with FTD in Colombia. It is intended that one of the main contributions to the Red Lat project is the way in which patients and families are studied throughout the Colombian territory.
Agustin M. Ibañez
BIO
Agustin Ibanez is an Argentinean neuroscientist interested in global approaches to dementia and social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience. He is full professor and Director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI, Chile), Associate Research Professor at GBHI-Trinity College Dublin, and Team Leader of Predictive Brain Health Modelling Group, Trinity College Dublin. Also, he is a Senior Atlantic Fellow at GBHI-UCSF and senior researcher at UdeSA. Agustin holds a track record with +300 publications, including top-ten journals (e.g., Lancet Neurology, World Psychiatry, Nature Reviews Neurology, Nature Human Behavior, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Trends in Neuroscience, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Neuron, Brain). He has received funding from the NIH, Alzheimer’s Association, Tau Consortium, GBHI, Takeda, the Inter-American Development Bank(IDB), ANID (Chile), COLCIENCIAS (Colombia), DAAD (Germany), MRC (United Kingdom), and CONICET (Argentina). He is the founder of the critical regional initiatives, such as the Multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat) and the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD). His work has been highlighted in the BBC, Nature, Nature News, Discovery Channel, Popular Science, Daily Mail, Newsweek, Le Monde, and Oxford University Press, among others.
Adolfo M. Garcia
BIO
Dr. Adolfo García specializes in language neurosciences. He is Director of the Center for Cognitive Neurosciences of the University of San Andrés, Senior Atlantic Fellow of the GBHI (UCSF), Researcher of the USACH and CONICET, honorary member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience of the ULL (Spain), and High Level Talent designated by the Ministry of Science of China. He is also President of the TREC Network.
Adolfo has received funding from institutions in the US (GBHI, Alzheimer’s Association), Chile (ANID, BrainLat), Colombia (COLCIENCIAS), the European Union (Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study), among others. Since 2023, he has been co-leading an NIH R01 project to detect linguistic markers of dementia, within the framework of ReDLat. He is also the creator of Include, an international network of cross-linguistic studies in brain health; and the Toolkit to Examine Lifelike Language (TELL), a web application for language assessments.
In addition, he has published more than 12 books, 30 chapters, and 180 articles in leading international journals. He has also made more than 250 presentations at academic events and multiple scientific outreach activities. His work has been awarded by internationally recognized institutions. You can find more information about Adolfo on his website.
Martin Bruno
BIO
Martin A. Bruno: PhD (McGill University, Montreal, Canada), Researcher at CONICET-Argentina (National Scientific and Technical Research Council), Professor of Medicine and Coordinator of the Doctorate in Biomedical Sciences (Catholic University of Cuyo, San Juan, Argentina), Director of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBM), Faculty of Biomedical Sciences (Catholic University of Cuyo, San Juan, Argentina) Principal Investigator (PI) of the Provincial Plan for the Prevention and Detection of Dementia (COFECyT, San Juan 2022-2023), Principal Investigator of Clinic.
Luis Ignacio Brusco
BIO
Dean of the School of Medicine-UBA. He is Doctor of Medicine (University of Buenos Aires-UBA) and Doctor of Philosophy. Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health of the Faculty of Medicine, UBA.
Neurologist and Psychiatrist, Argentine researcher and educator specialized in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. Director of the Alzheimer Center and Cognitive Functions UBA. He is a researcher at CONICET and directs the Alzheimer Argentina Association. Author of numerous books and multiple articles in high impact journals.
Maria Eugenia Godoy
BIO
María Eugenia Godoy has a degree in Government and International Relations from the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE). After that, she obtained a Master Degree in Institutional Communication Management at the Universidad de Ciencias Empresariales (UCES). Then, she extended her training in Project Management at the Universidad tecnológica Nacional (UTN).
Currently, she is Program Manager of the NIH/NIR R01: “Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat)”. She is also in charge of managing international grants and local grants. She has strong experience in international applications.
Previously, she worked as coordinator of Bilateral Cooperation at the National Directorate for Institutional Integration and Cooperation of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation of Argentina.
She has participated in international negotiations such as: Annual LAC NCPs meeting ALCUANET (Bridgetown, Barbados), High-Level Meeting (South Africa), Seminar on Fusion of Business Culture between China and Argentina (Beijing-Shanghái-Qingdao, China), Russian-Argentine Joint Commission on Economic-Commercial and Scientific- Technical Cooperation (Moscow, Russia).
Marcelo Maito
BIO
Marcelo Adrián Maito is a graduate of Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires. Afterward, he attended postgraduate studies in Research Methodology in Social Sciences at Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) and obtained a Master’s degree in n Data Mining and Knowledge Management at Austral University (UA).
Currently, he is the Data Manager of the NIH/NIR R01: “Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat)” and Online Researcher of the “Global Datos Brain Health Latam” project at the School of Psychology of the Universidad Adolfo Ibañez.
He has extensive experience in the health sector, working for more than ten years at the National Administration of Medicines, Food and Medical Technology (ANMAT).
He fulfilled functions of representation and negotiation of technical regulations within the framework of MERCOSUR, in bilateral cooperation projects, and managing regional cooperation projects. Subsequently, he carried out training and research tasks in the Coordination of Training and Scientific-Sanitary Research and was in charge of the “Strategic Data Analytical Innovation Program”.
Karime Salinas
Dr. in Chemical Sciences / Biochemistry
Juan Francisco Saavedra
Agustin M. Ibañez
BIO
Agustin Ibanez is an Argentinean neuroscientist interested in global approaches to dementia and social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience. He is full professor and Director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI, Chile), Associate Research Professor at GBHI-Trinity College Dublin, and Team Leader of Predictive Brain Health Modelling Group, Trinity College Dublin. Also, he is a Senior Atlantic Fellow at GBHI-UCSF and senior researcher at UdeSA. Agustin holds a track record with +300 publications, including top-ten journals (e.g., Lancet Neurology, World Psychiatry, Nature Reviews Neurology, Nature Human Behavior, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Trends in Neuroscience, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Neuron, Brain). He has received funding from the NIH, Alzheimer’s Association, Tau Consortium, GBHI, Takeda, the Inter-American Development Bank(IDB), ANID (Chile), COLCIENCIAS (Colombia), DAAD (Germany), MRC (United Kingdom), and CONICET (Argentina). He is the founder of the critical regional initiatives, such as the Multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat) and the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD). His work has been highlighted in the BBC, Nature, Nature News, Discovery Channel, Popular Science, Daily Mail, Newsweek, Le Monde, and Oxford University Press, among others.
Claudia Duran-Aniotz
BIO
Claudia Duran-Aniotz is a neuroscientist fully dedicated to understand neurodegenerative disorders with special emphasis in Alzheimer’s disease.
Since, early diagnosis and biomarkers research are areas poorly developed in Latin America countries, she has focused her work to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia affecting this particular population contributing to diminish the major economical and social costs associated with brain health disorders. Her research and academic interests are aligned to provide a useful platform to generate new knowledge and link basic and clinical research, promoting high translational discoveries and clinical collaborations. Her projects encourage the consolidation of a research group to study the neuropathological, clinical and translational research in Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, Dr. Duran-Aniotz is assistant professor and co-Director of Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) and she is also actively involved to regional initiatives, including the Multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat) as member of the specimen handling group and the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD) as a member of the Biomarkers framework.
Rodrigo Ortega
BIO
Rodrigo Ortega is Psychologist (Universidad Central de Chile), Master in Neurobiology and Ph.D. in Psychology (Universidad de Chile). With extensive professional experience in interdisciplinary research in Neuroscience. He has worked in large public and private funded projects in Cognitive Neuroscience, as a researcher and in other administrative positions. He has participated in the setup of several neurophysiological laboratories and has advanced skills in electrophysiological and eye-tracking data collection and analysis. Since July 2021, he is Program Manager at BrainLat.
Maria Eugenia Godoy
BIO
María Eugenia Godoy has a degree in Government and International Relations (UADE). She has a Master’s Degree in Institutional Communication Management (UCES) and a specialization in Project Management from the National Technological University.
She has also completed a postgraduate course in Scientific Diplomacy applied to neurosciences (UNESCO) and has completed an Intensive Postgraduate Course on Global Brain Health at the University of Chile.
She is currently project manager of the Multi-Partner Consortium to expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat) and is in charge of the integral management of international governmental, philanthropic and industrial projects. She also serves as an international consultant at the Latin American Institute of Brain Health (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibañez (Chile).
She has been working for more than 15 years in the field of Science, Technology and Innovation, participating in the development of partnerships and projects on an international scale. He has extensive experience in the management and management of consortia projects as well as in the participation in international negotiations.
Andrea Slachevsky
BIO
Andrea Slachevsky, neurologist, PhD in neurosciences Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI, France. Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile. Principal Investigator of the Center for Geroscience, Mental Health and Metabolism (GERO). Coordinator Memory Unit, Memory and Neuropsychiatry Center (CMYN), Neurology Service, Hospital del Salvador, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile Neurologist, Clínica Alemana Vice President and creator of Coprad (Corporación Profesional de Alzheimer y Otras Demencias), a non-governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Member of the board of directors of the Global Brain Health Institute. She participated in the development of the National Dementia Plan in Chile and in the creation of one of the memory units implemented in the context of Chile’s national dementia plan.
Her line of research focuses on neuropsychological and functionality in aging and neurocognitive disorders. She has published more than 100 articles and more than 20 book chapters. She has written or edited four books, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Manual for relatives and caregivers, Neuropsychology. Neural basis of mental processes, , Tratado de Neuropsicología, Cerebro Cotidiano and Manual de buenas prácticas para el diagnóstico de demencias
Maria Isabel Behrens
BIO
María Isabel Behrens, MD PhD, Full Professor at the University of Chile, neurologist and researcher dedicated to the study of the molecular mechanisms of dementia, especially the inverse relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. She was director of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery (2017-2019) Hospital Clínico Universidad de Chile, and is currently director of the Center for Advanced Clinical Research (CICA)-Hospital Clínico Universidad de Chile. She is Principal Investigator of a Regular FONDECYT project and a FONDEF, among other collaborative works in progress. He leads a pre-clinical study to explore a new therapy for Alzheimer’s disease. She has directed 9 projects as principal investigator, and 14 as co-investigator or associate, with 92 scientific publications. He does translational research and teaches both in the neurology clinic and in the direction of master’s and doctoral theses. Member of committees of various doctorates from the University of Chile. Awarded the “2019 Medical Research Award” and incorporated as a corresponding member of the Chilean Academy of Medicine. He constantly gives lectures on Alzheimer’s and other dementias in postgraduate courses at different universities and in the media. Dr. Behrens has a network of national and international collaborators.
