Trinity University psychology professor Kimberley Phillips, Ph.D., is no stranger to earning funding for her research on the early signs of Alzheimer's and related dementia, but it’s always exciting when new support comes through. When she recently secured a new grant, you can say she was pretty happy about it. “Oh my gosh, yes. So excited,” she said on a recent afternoon from her office in Trinity’s Center for the Sciences and Innovation. “It is a real opportunity with my collaborators to bring some ideas that we’ve had and get them tested, get them into the lab, and do this research,” Phillips said.
With a $200,000 Grant from the San Antonio Medical Foundation, Phillips, who is also the director of neuroscience at Trinity, begins her research this month that aims to lay groundwork for diagnosing Alzheimer’s and related dementias earlier so treatment can start sooner. “With most things, earlier detection means we can intervene earlier, and maybe change or delay the onset or progression,” Phillips says. It creates opportunities for Trinity undergraduate students to participate in world-class research, a hallmark of Trinity’s liberal arts and science education.
San Antonio is a critical place to do this research. Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, progressive brain disorders that slowly destroy memory, thinking, and the ability to carry out daily tasks, affect about 13% of people over 65 in Bexar county–that’s higher than the average rate of 12% across the country, per the Alzheimer’s Association.
The overall goal of Phillip’s research is a proof-of-concept study designed to look for molecular changes in the brain that happen before symptoms pop up.
“It appears that changes in the brain happen at least 10 to 20 years before any kind of symptoms appear,” she says. If we look at the brain earlier, the hope is that scientists can see what might be happening in the brain that we can connect to changes in behavior, or gait, or cognition.
Right now, treatments for Alzheimer’s are limited and there is no cure. Making lifestyle changes like adopting the Mediterranean diet, exercising, and having a solid social support network are currently the most effective non-pharmacological tools to delay symptoms and live the best possible life with the disease, says Phillips.
Primates Are Helpful Resesearch Subjects
For this research, Phillips will collaborate with Eric Vallender, Ph.D., associate director of research at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, and Adam Salmon, Ph.D., associate director of the Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at UT Health San Antonio. Corinna Ross, Ph.D., director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomed, where Phillips will be conducting her research with baboons is also a collaborator on this research.
Why baboons? The animals share very close neurological, biological, and genetic traits with humans, Phillips says. They age and show neurodegenerative cognitive decline much like we do. To measure cognitive decline in baboons, the research team, which will include a couple of Trinity psychology and neuroscience undergraduates, will get animals of varying ages to perform cognitive tasks using essentially a toy maze with multiple configurations.
At the primate research center, where the animals live and are cared for, a scientist can place a delicious piece of dried fruit in one compartment of the maze, then hand it to the baboon who then manipulates the tool to try to remove the treat. The researchers record how many challenges each animal gets through and how long it takes them to complete them. They can see if their abilities change over time, or they can compare the performance of an older baboon versus that of a younger peer. “They love doing these things,” Phillips says about the baboons. “They’re like a puzzle and they get a tasty treat that they like.” Phillips’ research will also look at real-time molecular, cognitive, and biomarker changes.
New students have joined Phillips’ lab this fall and a couple of them will most likely be doing some of the cognitive testing with the baboons the month.
The research “really has the potential to be transformative in establishing early detection tools” for humans, Phillips says. “This also is going to lay the foundation for larger grants that we would submit to the National Institutes of Health and others. We can show we can do this work.”