Neuropathlogy Core

SUMMARY NEUROPATHOLOGY CORE The Neuropathology Core supports the vision of the Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) by serving as a shared resource to facilitate and enhance multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Lewy Body Disease (LBD). It aims to continue providing comprehensive postmortem examinations and brain banking, ensuring adequate tissue preservation for high-content imaging and multiomics technologies. The Neuropathology Core’s mission is realized through five specific aims. Aim 1 focuses on providing comprehensive neuropathological evaluations for ADRC participants, well-documented dementia patients followed by Stanford Neurology clinicians, clinical trial participants, and healthy controls. Aim 2 involves maintaining and expanding a biorepository of fresh-frozen, short-fixed, and formalin-fixed paraffin- embedded brain tissue from patients within the AD spectrum, LBD spectrum, and cognitively normal individuals, employing methods that maximize tissue quality. Aim 3 supports interdisciplinary research by facilitating the application of cutting-edge and high-content technologies, particularly multiomics techniques, to both fresh-frozen and fixed postmortem brain tissue samples. Additionally, the core aims to support digital pathology research for quantitative neuropathology, including harmonizing data with other centers to enhance tissue sharing. Aim 4 supports a newly established ADRC Stem Cell Program to provide the community with deeply characterized human induced pluripotent stem cells, augment their use by genetic engineering to make the lines more user-friendly for downstream neuronal modeling, and generate a biobank of neuronal progenitors and early organoids for pilot studies. Aim 5 emphasizes training, maintaining a rich environment for trainees and faculty and providing education in neuropathology, clinico-pathological correlations, and state-of- the-art techniques. Several new training modules for iPSC derivation and modeling will be provided. Through these aims, the Neuropathology Core is instrumental in bridging research, discovery, and clinical domains, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of AD and related disorders.