# Quantification of Neuroinflammation inAlzheimer's Disease Using Diffusion BasisSpectrum Imaging

> **NIH NIH R01** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $707,676

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (Knight ADRC) at Washington
University was founded as the Memory and Aging Project in 1979. Since that year, it has received
continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and now supports an active cohort of
nearly 800 participants who undergo longitudinal clinical and biomarker assessments for preclinical and
symptomatic Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Knight ADRC is supported by three major NIH awards, the
ADRC center grant (P50AG05681, JC Morris PI), the Healthy Aging and Senile Dementia (HASD;
AG03991, JC Morris PI, Imaging Core Leader T Benzinger), and the Adult Children Study (ACS, P01
AG026276, JC Morris PI, Project 4 Leader T Benzinger). With this R01, we request funding for a new
initiative which will add a novel biomarker of neuroinflammation in AD, diffusion basis spectrum imaging
(DBSI) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Members of our research team have previously established
the validity of DBSI MRI for neuroinflammation in multiple sclerosis, including both in vivo and ex vivo
mouse and human studies. We now extend this research to AD, and will perform in vivo validation using
positron emission tomography (PET) and ex vivo validation in human post mortem samples, including
immunohistochemistry and autoradiography. Our preliminary data supports the predictive value of
neuroinflammation markers in the progress from normal cognition to dementia, and in particularly, the
promise of DBSI MRI for this, findings which we will validate in this larger study. We hypothesize that
DBSI MRI will correspond to regional neuroinflammation in PET scans and that will correspond to areas of
microglial infiltration in the autopsy specimens. We hypothesize that this relationship will be present in the
earliest preclinical stages of AD, when cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has abnormally low levels of Aβ but does
not yet demonstrate abnormal levels of tau. Because DBSI MRI requires only Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) approved MRI sequences, it could be rapidly extended to clinical trials or clinical
populations.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9956943
- **Project number:** 5R01AG054567-04
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Tammie Lee Smith Benzinger
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $707,676
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-09-15 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9956943

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9956943, Quantification of Neuroinflammation inAlzheimer's Disease Using Diffusion BasisSpectrum Imaging (5R01AG054567-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9956943. Licensed CC0.

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