Message from the Director Dear Friends of UCI MIND, UCI MIND has embarked upon an exciting new chapter, made possible by the support of our local community. The Quilter Family— Ann and Charlie, Chris, Matt and Patty, and Patrick—have made the largest donation in the history of the Institute. This gift is not only transformative, it is constructional. The Quilters’ generosity was quickly followed by similarly remarkable demonstrations of support from other UCI MIND community members, including Harriet Harris, the Brethren Community Foundation, Laura Khouri and Michael Hayde, and Keith Swayne. The UCI School of Medicine is also a key…
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Message from the Director Dear Friends of UCI MIND, It has been an exciting season for UCI MIND. As you saw in our cover article, the Quilter Family has made the largest gift in our organization’s history. This gift is allowing us to reimagine the future of UCI MIND and we could not be more grateful. Our investigators remain highly productive, securing large research grants (p 4). And we continue to bring cutting edge and valuable information back to our community in a variety of ways, including through yet another successful local research conference (p 5) in partnership with Alzheimer’s…
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Today, I published an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer with my colleague Jason Karlawish, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania about blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease. Blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease represent remarkable and rapid progress and will revolutionize care for people with cognitive impairment and dementia. They will also pave the way to prevention—increasing accessibility to sensitive biological tests of brain health and disease. But the tremendous advances in science have also led to some business opportunities that concern us. We were able to locate 6 companies on the Internet that are offering blood tests directly to consumers; that…
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Message from the Director Dear Friends of UCI MIND, The summer ended with a flurry of positive news for UCI MIND. Thankfully, our NIA P30 grant that makes us Orange County’s only federally-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center was officially renewed in July (p 1). Then, in September, a team of investigators led by Dr. Ahmad Sajjadi was awarded an additional large clinical research grant that is very much aligned and synergistic with the work of the ADRC (p 6). These grants and the overall portfolio of funded work by UCI MIND investigators position us to not only continue our work,…
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UCI Health Neurologist and UCI MIND faculty member, Ahmad Sajjadi, MD, PhD, was quoted in the highly cited Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) regarding the changing landscape of diagnostics with the approval of the nee blood test for Alzheimer's disease. Read the article here.
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Message from the Director Dear Friends of UCI MIND, Please enjoy this issue of MIND Matters. We include a description and photos from our collaborative event with the UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts Department of Music, "Finding Light: Alzheimer’s Stories." Then, be sure to watch some of this amazing performance here: Concert Choir. This event in some ways exemplifies the mission of UCI MIND. Though our investigators spend nearly all of their time in the lab or clinic conducting state-of the art research, we never lose sight of the human elements of disease and this powerful collaboration through…
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Message from the Director For many, the new year is a time for fresh starts and resolutions. As we enter 2025, we at UCI MIND are taking the opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to the mission to conduct research to discover solutions for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. UCI MIND investigators are unwavering in our commitment to this mission. The remainder of this newsletter, as with all of our newsletters, describes the manifold elements of the work of UCI MIND—from conducting fundamental basic science, to running vital clinical trials, to sharing our knowledge with you the community we serve and…
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