Rebecca Lepping, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Neurology, has received a research award to serve as the University of Kansas Medical Center’s primary investigator for the project “ADRC Consortium for Clarity in ADRD Research Through Imaging (CLARiTI).” 

The study, led by the University of Washington and funded by the National Institutes of Health, brings together Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers (ADRCs) around the United States for a longitudinal study that focuses on the in vivo detection of mixed pathologies and their antecedents in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRDs).  

“There’s a lot of variability in how memory problems can progress into Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias,” Lepping said. “It can be hard to disentangle what biomarkers are leading to pure Alzheimer’s disease versus pure vascular dementia; this grant is meant to help with that disentangling.” 

Through the five-year, $1.8 million grant, the KU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center will serve as a consortium site, integrating additional neuroimaging and plasma collection of enrolled participants. Additional imaging will be done in partnership with Swati R. Levendovszky, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Radiology and director of the Hoglund Biomedical Imaging Center. This additional imaging and testing will help characterize mixed pathologies and lead to a more generalized and publicly available imaging-plasma dataset. 

Lepping formerly served as assistant director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Neuroimaging Core. Her past work in this research core paved the way for this new role on the CLARiTI project. 

“This project is really the culmination of work that many people within our Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center have been doing within the last decade or more,” Lepping said. “KU is definitely leading the way in many of these activities, and I’m really excited to be representing our site in this high- profile project.”