November 2024 marked 20 years since the establishment of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute (EMBI) at UAB. The institute was made possible by a generous gift from the McKnight Brain Research Foundation (MBRF), matched by the university, to support research in cognitive aging and age-related memory loss. Ronald Lazar, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Neurology, has been director of the institute since 2017.
The 65 faculty members that make up the institute have established a comprehensive portfolio of funded research, with pre-clinical research leading to translational studies, and ultimately clinical trials. These faculty represent nine UAB units: Heersink School of Medicine, Graduate School, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Engineering, School of Health Professions, School of Nursing, School of Public Health, Callahan Eye Hospital, and School of Optometry, with most studies involving cross-unit collaborations. EMBI investigators at UAB have also cultivated partnerships with the other EMBI sites at the University of Florida, University of Arizona, and University of Miami.
One example of a four-site collaboration is the MBRF-funded McKnight Brain Aging Registry (MBAR). This team has worked together to assemble a large, informative database on successful brain aging and has invited other investigators to utilize their data. Kristina Visscher, Ph.D., associate director of the EMBI at UAB, and associate professor in the UAB Department of Neurobiology, is the UAB principal investigator for MBAR. In addition to research, UAB’s EMBI faculty are actively involved with the teaching and mentoring of trainees at all academic levels.
“These kinds of projects take long-term work to get done. The MBRF helps to guide and let them happen,” Visscher said. “One of the incredible things about the McKnight foundation, and especially their 20 year investment in UAB, is that they have long term influences on the trajectories of the field, and of people’s careers. I began to study aging because of collaborations available through the MBRF, when I started my lab here 15 years ago. McKnight has nurtured many trainees through this process.”
An example of a cross-unit collaboration is a partnership with UAB Family and Community Medicine Clinics at UAB Highlands and UAB Hoover, where the institute launched the Brain Health Advocacy Mission (BHAM) Registry in August 2023 and has since enrolled more than 135 participants. This is a long-term project to implement individualized, proactive strategies for protecting brain health in patients in primary care settings through management of vascular risk factors and lifestyle changes. BHAM includes the McCance Brain Care Score, with measures reflecting risk factors, lifestyle behaviors, and social-emotional elements.
Upcoming events for EMBI include the UAB McKnight Annual Lecture on February 13, 2025, with guest presenter, Mitchell Elkind, M.D., chief clinical science officer and past president of the American Heart Association, and 2025 MBRF Inter-Institutional Meeting hosted by EMBI University of Miami, with the theme “Brain Health: Genetic and Environmental Factors, and Big Data.”