UPDATED: 15th April 2005
The Centre includes scientists from the Universities of Leicester, Loughborough, Birmingham, Aston and Warwick. The members of the Midlands ART Network Centre span a wide range of disciplines including epidemiology (Hogervorst & Jagger), genetics (Talbot & Lendon), genomics/bio-informatics (Brookes), proteomics (Aldred), amyloid biology (Pinheiro), oxidative stress (Griffiths & Aldred), geriatric psychiatry (Bentham, Lindesay, Prettyman & Sheehan), ophthalmology (Gherghel), imaging (Humphreys & Kourtzi), cognitive psychology (Maylor, Hogervorst & Bandelow) and cell biology (Nagy). All researchers are currently active in the study of ageing and dementia and have extensive collaborations both nationally and internationally.
Dr Sarah Aldred is a Lecturer in Exercise Biochemistry at the University of Birmingham. She is interested in oxidative stress in normal ageing and Alzheimer’s disease, particularly the application of advanced proteomic techniques. Since joining the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences in Oct 2003, Sarah has continued to research oxidatively-modified lipoproteins in chronic diseases associated with ageing – initiating research into the effect of exercise on these species. She also has active research interests in exercise in healthy ageing, and in endogenous antioxidants such as DHEA. She currently holds a grant from the Alzheimer’s Society to research DHEA and oxidative stress in Alzheimer’s disease and was recently the recipient of an award from SPARC to look at the effect of exercise on lipoprotein oxidation in 65 to 75 year old subjects.
Dr Stephan Bandelow is Psychology lecturer at Human Sciences, University of Loughborough and studies memory, executive function and visual perception in dementia using computerized cognitive tests and diagnostics batteries. These tests were validated at Oxford University in collaboration with Professor David Smith of the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing and Professor Hogervorst (see below).
Dr Pete Bentham is a consultant old age psychiatrist at Queen Elizabeth Psychiatric Hospital in Birmingham. He is involved in several clinical trials including CALM-AD, DOMINO, HTA-SADD, AD2000 and TauRx. In addition he collaborates widely on basic research in AD including genetic studies.
Prof Tony Brookes is Professor of Bio-informatics and Genomics at the University of Leicester. He has a long standing involvement in the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. His current interests centre on the role of genomic structural variation on human disease, particularly AD.
Dr Doina Gherghel is a Lecturer in Ophthalmology at Aston University. Doina has several research projects on glaucoma and its interactions with other diseases. She holds an ART grant to investigate the vascular associations between Glaucoma and Alzheimer’s disease which have multiple neurodegenerative consequences
Prof Helen Griffiths is Professor in Biomedical Sciences at Aston University. She has an ART funded pilot to investigate whether nitrated LDL provides a link between elevated plasma homocysteine and vascular dementia. Recent work demonstrated the association of LDL nitration and hyperhomocysteinemia in patients with systemic inflammatory and vascular diseases. Another interest is micronutrient status and oxidative stress in dementias, which she has developed in collaboration with Dr Cristina Polidori ( Dusseldorf). Prof Griffiths has also used proteomic technologies to identify novel effects of micronutrients in promoting neurone survival and, with Dr Aldred, was the first to report the identification of a novel biomarker of vascular benefit following micronutrient supplementation.
Prof Eef Hogervorst holds a Chair of Biological Psychology at the University of Loughborough. She studies early diagnoses and modifiable risk and protective factors (such as hormones and nutrition) for dementia and age-related cognitive decline.
Prof Glyn Humphreys is Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Birmingham. His research interests are in visual cognition, including the generation of neural - net models and mapping brain activity using PET and functional MRI scanning.
Prof Carol Jagger is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Leicester. Carol carries out health services research, particularly within the field of ageing and older people's health. She leads the research on the longstanding Melton Mowbray Ageing Project, a longitudinal study of ageing. The focus of her work is on the mental and physical functioning of older people as they age, with research crossing the primary-secondary care interface. She is one of the leading UK researchers in the field of health expectancy with a programme of work to develop harmonised health indicators for European surveys and co-author of the book Determining Health Expectancies, which is a synthesis of ten years of research through the International Network on Health Expectancy and the Disability Process (REVES).
Prof Zoe Kourtzi is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests are in the neural basis of learning and brain plasticity across the age range, and in developing fMRI protocols to optimise functional imaging in elderly populations.
Dr Corinne Lendon is Senior Lecturer in Molecular Psychiatry at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests include the identification of genetic and environmental factors that predispose to Alzheimer's disease and modify treatment response. She is currently on study leave at the Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia.
Prof James Lindesay is Foundation Professor of Psychiatry for the Elderly at the University of Leicester. He has a long-standing involvement in clinical research, having an interest on delirium in dementia.
Prof Elizabeth Maylor is Professor of Psychology at the University of Warwick. Since 1990, her research has been primarily concerned with cognitive ageing, in particular, aspects of memory in both normal ageing and dementia. Her current research on dementia centres on the effects of AD on visual and attentional processes, especially impairments in enumeration ability. She is currently conducting a study designed to compare the effects of AD with those of other common late life conditions that can mimic AD (vascular dementia and depression) to discover whether an enumeration deficit is specific to AD.
Dr Zsuzsanna Nagy is Lecturer in Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Birmingham. Her initial studies on the pathological correlates of dementia in Alzheimer’s disease were followed by the discovery of a possible new pathogenic mechanism, which could be responsible for the neuronal changes seen in the disease. Her research, directed towards understanding of cell cycle-related cellular events in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, culminated in the filing of 3 patent applications (one granted in Europe) for methods of early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. She has 46 peer reviewed papers and written 12 book chapters in the last 10 years.
Dr Rhein Parri is a Lecturer in Pharmacology at Aston University. The focus of his research group is on the mechanisms of astrocyte-neuron signalling in the thalamus, and how such signalling is involved in thalamic function. The techniques used are combined electrophysiological (patch clamp and extracellular) recording and Calcium imaging.
Dr Teresa Pinheiro is a Senior Lecturer in Structural Biology at the University of Warwick. Dr Pinheiro is a specialist on studies of protein folding and misfolding, particularly of those proteins involved in neurodegeneration such as ß- amyloid. Her current research includes studies on nature of the cytotoxic molecule in prion diseases, using cell culture assays in parallel with structural analysis of fibrillization intermediates; the structural basis of prion strains; methods development for prion diagnostics; and fibrillization and cytotoxicity of a- synuclein mutants in Parkinson’s disease.
Dr Richard Prettyman is the Lead Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry at the Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. He is involved in a research project investigating the role of cFLIP protein in dementia.
Dr Bart Sheehan is an Associate Clinical Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the University of Warwick, and an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in the Coventry & Warwickshire Partnership Trust. His research interests include:
Dr Chris Talbot is a Lecturer in Medical Genetics at the University of Leicester. He is studying the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease, particularly to identify the causative variation on chromosome 10 and the role of structural genomic variation. He is also conducting a trial of heparin- mimetics as therapeutic agents in AD using a transgenic mouse model.