# BLRD Research Career Scientist Award Application

> **NIH VA IK6** · JAMES A. HALEY VA MEDICAL CENTER · 2020 · —

## Abstract

Dr. Paula C. Bickford is currently a Senior Research Career Scientist at the James A. Haley VA
Hospital in Tampa, FL. She continues to be a productive and collaborative VA scientist. Her
research focus is in the area of aging and neurodegenerative disease, specifically with a focus on the
innate immune system and how aging interacts with the innate immune system and how this then
impacts normal cognitive aging and the progression of many neurogedenerative diseases. It is now
well established that aging is the primary risk factor for a number of diseases that cross multiple
disciplines. The impact of this on research of neurodegenerative disease is that aging must be
considered as a co-morbidity factor in our models of disease, and in our approach to understanding
therapeutic treatments. Dr. Bickford’s invited review, “Aging leads to altered microglial function that
reduces brain resiliency increasing vulnerability to neurodegenerative diseases”, published in
Experimental Gerontology this year discusses the impact of these aging on the innate immune system
of the brain. It is the goal of Dr. Bickford’s funded research programs to understand these complex
biological processes in order to design interventions such that either existing or new therapeutics
against neurodegenerative diseases will be more effective. Our recent data suggests that interventions
that work in young animal models of disease are not as effective in aging models. For example, in a
paper examining therapeutic interventions for traumatic brain injury featured in “This week in
Neuroscience” as one of the most influential manuscripts for that issue, we demonstrated that stem cell
therapies and conditioned media from stem cells is less effective in aged rats than young, likely due to
the pro-inflammatory environment of the aged brain reducing the survival of the cell therapy. Our
recent unpublished data on some small molecule and chemokine modes of therapies for Parkinson’s
disease are observing similar effects of aging. One of our VA Merit funded grants is examining this
question directly with proteomics of young versus aged microglia and has shown that several pathways
involving nutrient sensing and energy metabolism within microglia are altered and may underlie the
change in pro-inflammatory phenotype that is observed with aging and thus targeting the underlying
mechanistic changes with age, rather than directly reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines, may have
broader impacts on increasing resiliency of the brain microenvironment, and thus a broad impact on
therapeutics of neurodegenerative disease. !

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9899096
- **Project number:** 5IK6BX004214-03
- **Recipient organization:** JAMES A. HALEY VA MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** PAULA C BICKFORD
- **Activity code:** IK6 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-04-01 → 2025-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9899096

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9899096, BLRD Research Career Scientist Award Application (5IK6BX004214-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9899096. Licensed CC0.

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