by Paul Govern
On March 31, approximately 200 people attended the third annual Vanderbilt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Day, sponsored by the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center (VMAC) and its National Institutes of Health-funded Interdisciplinary Training Program in Alzheimer’s Disease (NIH T32-AG058524).
Held in a meeting room at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (and streamed live online), the day of research presentations concluded with a keynote address by Suzanne Craft, PhD, director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Wake Forest University, whose talk was titled “Metabolic Pathways to Alzheimer’s Disease: Novel Mechanisms and Therapeutic Approaches.”
Reflecting VMAC’s multidisciplinary approach to the study of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, Vanderbilt academic areas represented by speakers at the event included Pharmacology, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Psychology and Neurology.
VMAC’s director, Angela Jefferson, PhD, professor of Neurology and Medicine, made welcoming remarks and, at the end of the day, announced research poster awards (57 posters were on display at the event).
Formerly housed in the Department of Neurology, VMAC become a freestanding center in 2020, joining other disease-based VUMC centers funded by the NIH, such as the Vanderbilt Diabetes Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
Video of all of this year’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Day presentations will be available soon on the VMAC website.