Lewy Body Dementia Research Center of Excellence

We are proud to announce the Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) Research Center of Excellence (RCOE) at Stanford University!  In December 2017 researchers from across the country joined in the first-ever comprehensive network of research centers to conduct LBD clinical trials, provide community outreach, and expand professional continuing medical education. Representing 24 of medicine’s most prestigious academic medical research centers, these Research Centers of Excellence will help to streamline and standardize LBD science while connecting patients and families with the latest opportunities to participate in LBD clinical trials.

LBD Research Center of Excellence Directors

Kathleen Poston, MD, MS
Co-Director

Dr. Kathleen Poston is the Edward F. and Irene Thiele Pimley Professor of Neurology and the Neurological Sciences and Professor, by courtesy, of Neurosurgery. She completed her Movement Disorders fellowship training at Columbia University and a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Feinstein Institute, joining the Stanford faculty in 2009.  In addition to LBD RCOE Co-Director, she is the Pacific Udall Center Clinical Core Leader at Stanford and the ADRC Clinical Core Co-Leader.  Dr. Poston’s research lab is focused on understanding the cognitive and other non-motor impairments that develop in patients with Lewy body pathology. With this, the bulk of her clinical practice is caring for parkinsonian patients with cognitive impairments and, for her research studies, she has recruited over 200 parkinsonian patients with a wide range of memory impairments (PD with mild cognitive impairment, PD dementia, and LBD).

Sharon Sha, MD
Co-Director

Dr. Sharon Sha is a Clinical Professor at Stanford University. She completed her Behavioral Neurology fellowship training at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and joined the Stanford Faculty in 2013.  In addition to LBD RCOE Co-Director, she is the Medical Director of the Stanford Neuroscience Clinical Trials Group, Co-Director of the Huntington’s disease and Ataxia Clinic, clinical core co-leader of the Stanford ADRC, the founding Director of the Stanford Behavioral Neurology Fellowship and leads the clinical trials for the Memory Disorders division. The majority of her clinical and research time is devoted to caring for patients with behavioral neurodegenerative disorders, finding treatments for them, and training the next generation to do the same.

LBD Research Center of Excellence at Stanford University

The Research Center of Excellence is located in the Stanford University Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences, as part of the Division of Memory Disorders and the Division of Movement Disorders, which have rapidly grown into world-leading programs that are highly integrated and uniquely collaborative.  Our Center includes both Memory disorders and Movement disorders Physicians, Neuropsychologists, a Psychiatrist, Nurse coordinators, Social Worker, Genetics counselor, and Physical/Occupational/Speech Therapists.

Highlights of our integrated Center include:

The Stanford Alzheimer’s disease Research Center (ADRC) started at Stanford in 2015. Our ADRC is the only national Center with a dual focus on cognitive impairments due to Alzheimer’s and Lewy body pathologies. We are actively recruiting patients with Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and healthy adults.

The Poston Lab conducts translational research that bridges basic science with patient care.  We study biological biomarkers, imaging biomarkers, and clinical biomarkers to understand the neural underpinnings of dementia and cognitive impairments in people with Lewy Body dementia (included Parkinson’s disease dementia and Dementia with Lewy Bodies.