All investigators involved in this project have significant experience in the Down syndrome and Alzheimer fields.
Ann-Charlotte Granholm, PhD, DDS, is the executive director of the Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging at University of Denver (DU). She has a broad background in neurodegenerative disease, especially as it pertains to Down syndrome (DS), Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and aging. She has been funded by the NIH for 25 years and has more than 160 peer-reviewed articles, most of them related to aging, neurodegeneration, or behavioral alterations associated with aging, including both cognitive and motor domains of function. Dr. Granholm was the director of the Brain Bank at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) for 15 years, and is now the inaugural Executive Director for the Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging at DU since 2016. Dr. Granholm’s laboratory is highly focused on exosome work, both in mouse models and humans. Dr. Granholm recently published the first study on AD biomarkers in exosomes from patients with DS-related AD and controls, demonstrating that AD biomarkers are present early in life in those with DS. This was a collaborative study, co-authored by Dr. Mufson (below) and several collaborative partners.
