Dream Team Projects

The Predicting Health in Aging (PHIA) project will address two major precision health goals, leveraging a deeply characterized cohort of 200 healthy older individuals from whom baseline measures of brain structure, brain function, genetics, and CSF biomarkers of risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are collected. PHIA’s first goal is to include a longitudinal follow up assessment that will seek to identify critical biomarkers that predict changes in cognitive and neurobiological health that occur 3.5 years after baseline assessment. PHIA’s second goal is to incorporate additional novel MRI metrics and Tau PET imaging to establish how brain regions known to be impacted early in AD (a) contribute to early changes in memory performance and (b) ultimately predict risk of AD dementia onset over a 7-year window. By using cutting-edge imaging modalities, blood-based and genetic assays, and multivariate analytics to predict the transition from normal to pathological aging, this project will improve the ability to predict long-term health vs. risk of dementia among clinically asymptomatic individuals.