Research Focus
Dementia is the second leading cause of death for all Australians. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, predicted to affect 152M globally by 2050.
Common late onset Alzheimer’s disease is caused by age-related failure of clearance of toxic proteins (β-amyloid and tau) from the brain leading to an immune response. Successful treatment or prevention relies on the ability to identify those at high risk or the earliest disease stages.
We run one of the largest cohort studies in the world focused on those at high risk and in the earliest disease stages of Alzheimer’s disease, for the identification of affordable, accessible and scalable biomarkers for dementia diagnosis and screening, to be prepared for the best use of newly developed drugs and lifestyle interventions as they become available.
In addition we carry out large scale genetic studies, including the use of genetic risk prediction and the identification of causal disease processes in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Gallery
Research Projects
Current Research Projects
PISA (the Prospective Imaging Study of Aging: Genes, Brain and Behaviour)
Genetic risk Prediction for Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
ADNeT (the Australian Dementia Network)
Research Team
Kerrie McAloney
Yifan Sun
Jessica Adsett
Niklas Schultze
Funding
- CSIRO collaborative funding: Queensland Aging and dementia Study: Imaging, Lifestyle, Genetics and Biomarkers (QADS)
- NHMRC Ideas “Optimising the therapeutic value of cholinesterase inhibitors in Alzheimer's disease” CIB ($ 796,352) 2024-2028
- MRFF-Dementia, Ageing and Aged Care Mission scheme grant CIC ($4,000,000) 2021-2026
- Perpetual IMPACT Philanthropy Grant (81,000) 2022-2024
Publications
Faucher C, Borne L, Behler A, Paton B, Giorgio J, Fripp J, Thienel R, Lupton MK*, Breakspear M*. A central role of sulcal width in the associations of sleep duration and depression with cognition in mid to late life. Sleep Adv. 2024 Aug 10;5(1) PMID: 39221446 *joint senior authors
Thienel R, Borne L, Faucher C, Behler A, Robinson GA, Fripp J, Giorgio J, Ceslis A, McAloney K, Adsett J, Galligan D, Martin NG, Breakspear M*, Lupton MK*. Can an online battery match in-person cognitive testing in providing information about age-related cortical morphology? Brain Imaging Behav. 2024 Sep 7. doi: 10.1007/s11682-024-00918-2. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39243354. *joint senior authors
Gomez, L.M., Mitchell, B.L., McAloney, K., Adsett, J., Garden, G., Wood, M., Diaz-Torres, S., Garcia-Marin, L.M, Breakspear, M., Martin, N.G., Lupton, M.K. The effect of genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease and related traits on recruitment bias in a study of cognitive ageing. Twin Res. Hum. Genet. 2023 Jul 21;1-6. doi: 10.1017/thg.2023.26. Online ahead of print
Further Information
- PISA (Prospective Imaging Study of Aging) study co-CIs across multiple institutions and disciplines including Michael Breakspear (University of Newcastle), Jurgen Fripp (CSIRO), and Gail Robinson (UQ)
- QADS (Queensland Aging and Dementia Study; Imaging, Lifestyle, Genetics and Biomarkers) aiming to 1) support, consolidate and expand the Brisbane, Qld based healthy ageing and dementia cohorts; 2) Support a screening site in Brisbane, to provide more Queenslanders with access to the latest potential therapies through participation in trials; 3) Investigate and develop novel digital and diagnostic technologies. With co-CIs Jurgen Fripp (CSIRO), Elizabeth Coulson (UQ) and Robert Adams (UQ and RBWH)
- Petroula Proitsi, Centre for Preventive Neurology, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, UK, on AD Genetic Epidemiology
- Simon Laws, lead AIBL study researcher at the Edith Cowan University (ECU) genetics and epigenetics studies. I have recently been appointed Adjunct Associate Professor at Simon’s department at ECU to facilitate collaboration and future co-supervision of students
- Chris Fowler, lead AIBL study researcher at the Florey in Melbourne on blood-based biomarker studies, combining sample sets
- Nicolas Ashton, University of Gothenburg, Sweden on plasma protein biomarkers
- Paul Thompson and Neda Jahanshad, University of Southern California, USA, on analysis of neuroimaging and genetics data
- Allan McRae, Queensland Brain Institute, UQ on DNA methylation data analysis
- Wayne Leifert, CSIRO Adelaide, saliva sample collection in the PISA cohort for protein biomarker analysis
- Enedia Mioshi, University of East Anglia, UK, on caregiver burden analysis in the PISA study
- Adam Vogel, University of Melbourne and Chief Science Officer and Founder of Redenlab, speech acoustic analysis in the PISA study
- Perminder Sachdev and Karen Mather, at the University of New South Wales, to carry out joint analysis with the Older Australian Twin Study (OATS) and the Memory and Aging Study (MAS)
- Member of world leading AD genetics consortia including GERAD, the UK-based Alzheimer’s GWAS consortium, the Alzheimer’s Exome Sequencing Group, and IGAP (International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project), a worldwide GWAS Meta-analysis consortium, for which I implemented the joining of Australian cohorts. I have contributed genetic data to all the major large-scale genetic association studies for AD
- I work with international leaders in the field of psychiatric genetics and other complex traits, contributing to data world-leading genome-wide association studies.