Two University of Nebraska Medical Center scientists were honored recently for their research into Alzheimer's disease and other conditions related to aging.
Jyothi Arikkath, Ph.D., assistant professor of developmental neuroscience in the Munroe-Meyer Institute, received the Oldfield Award while Bradley Witbrodt, M.D., received the Nancy and Ronald Reagan Alzheimer's Scholarship Fund Award.
Dr. Arikkath studies how neurons form connections with each other, how these connections allow people to learn and retain memory and how these connections are altered in diseases with learning and memory deficits, such as Alzheimer’s.
Research shows that aberrant neural circuit formation and /or function underlies the pathology of a number of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Identifying core components of these pathways would provide better tools for therapeutic intervention.
Dr. Witbrodt — who graduated earlier this month from the College of Medicine — uses cellular telephones to measure activity, life-space and time-budgets in community dwelling adults.
The goal is to develop and deploy a mobile health monitoring system that can be used to gather realtime data on patients in the community and report it back to a central data collection site, where it can be analyzed for clinically relevant outcomes.
Dr. Witbrodt has helped write the code and validate and test the system, which is a larger project under the auspices of assistant geriatrics professor Stephen Bonasera, M.D., Ph.D.
The late Col. Barney Oldfield established the Oldfield Award in honor of his wife, Vada Kinman Oldfield, who battled Alzheimer's for 11 years.
The Kinman-Oldfield Family Foundation established the Reagan Award to honor the late president who battled Alzheimer's for 10 years.
Through world-class research and patient care, UNMC generates breakthroughs that make life better for people throughout Nebraska and beyond. Its education programs train more health professionals than any other institution in the state. Learn more at unmc.edu.