Friday, April 26, 2024
4/26/2024
ABSTRACT Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) remains a devastating neurodegenerative disorder that slowly compromises normal cognition and behavior, leading to death. In 2022, the national cost of caring for ADRD patients was estimated to be $321B with an additional $271B in unpaid costs incurred due to caregiving by family and friends. Despite this staggering statistic, there exist few treatments and no cures for ADRD. A major impediment in designing interventions and therapies is the involvement of heterogenous genetic risk factors, lifestyle factors and co-morbidities. Unraveling such a multifarious pathogenetic mechanism would require scientists to cross traditional boundaries between disciplines. Towards this, we had designed an interdisciplinary research and professional training program for predoctoral students from a basic research department (Neuroscience) and a clinical department (Clinical Health Psychology) at the University of Florida (UF). Since its inception in 2018, we have graduated 8 students and we have disseminated didactic knowledge and scientific discourse to our T32 community and beyond. Notably, of the 18 trainees in our program, 11 are female and 6 are from disadvantaged backgrounds. In this past funded cycle, UF leadership delivered close to $1.1M in Institutional support they originally promised in the application. To continue this ADRD training framework, we now seek renewal of our ongoing T32 program, in the form of the Clinical & Translational T32 in ADRD (CaTT-ADRD) program. In this renewal application, we seek continued support to sustain a cross-disciplinary, diversified and translational training program designed for pre-doctoral students to foster their professional and academic trajectory into successful translational scientists in ADRD. Our renewal application introduces new mentors and training inclusive of the artificial intelligence initiative at UF. We have been fostering the next generation of ADRD scholar-leaders within our preceptor cohort, with one of these preceptors joining our leadership in this renewal application. As before, our institution demonstrates their clear support for this T32 program by providing direct Institutional support as well as general shared resources support. The overarching goal of this proposal will be to build upon the outstanding existing infrastructure of neuroscience training and the vast expertise in ADRD and clinical aging research at UF. Overall, our aims are to provide (1) cross-disciplinary mentorship in research concepts and methodology, scientific analysis and interpretation; (2) opportunities to train and interact with faculty who are leading authorities in the field of ADRD and aging; (3) support for diverse dissertation committees that include secondary mentors to promote broad-based and comprehensive training; (4) personalized mentorship for professional development including grant writing, research communication, and networking; and (5) impetus to establish programs to ensure continuing recruitment and training of underserved students.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
