Page 88 - MaquetaFundCIEN-2019-ENG

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Annual Report 2019
On the other hand, we have organized MRI data corresponding to the ‘Vallecas Project’ and Queen Sofia Foundation Alzheimer Center subjects, converting the data obtained directly from MRI equipment into the appropriate format for anal- ysis.
A collaborative project with CESVIMA (Supercomputing and Visualization Center of Madrid), a center from the UPM (Technical University of Madrid) has also been established.
As a result, a VBM analysis of T1 sequences from visits 1 and 2 of the subjects ‘Val- lecas Project’ has been performed. The results of this analysis form the basis of a new project awarded to Dr. Bryan Strange by the Alzheimer’s Association (“The healthy elderly brain: MRI predictors for developing MCI”), which has allowed the hiring of a new team member, Dr. Linda Zhang. Dr. Zhang, expert in analysis of structural MR images, has examined the white matter in visit 1 of the subjects of the Vallecas Project.
In 2019, Dr. Linda Zhang continued working on the predictive algorithm in Dr. Jussi Tohka’s laboratory at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, Finland, as part of her Queen Sofia Foundation-MAPFRE scholarship. Dr. Tohka is specialized in machine learning and assisted in the validation of the predictive algorithm, both through validation in an internal sample (subjects of the Vallecas Project with mild cognitive impairment-MCI beyond visit 2), as well as in an external sample (sub- jects with DCL from the ADNI cohort).
Dr. Zhang has also focused on investigating the effects that the ε4 allele of the APOE gene has on the hippocampal volume of cognitively healthy elderly from the Vallecas Project, as this is a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. These ef- fects were investigated both transversally and longitudinally from visit 1 to visit 5. In addition, she identified subjects carrying the ε4 allele who experienced MCI dur- ing the Vallecas Project follow-up and performed a longitudinal analysis between these subjects and a control group with an allelic combination ε3/ε3 of the APOE gene and who had also developed MCI.
In 2019, Marta Garo Pascual was a recipient of the Queen Sofia Foundation-MAP- FRE scholarship. The objective of the scholarship was to further study the super- agers population that had been identified the previous year within the Vallecas Project cohort. Superagers respond to people over 80 with an episodic memory at least as good as that of a healthy person in their 50s and 60s.
The first period of the scholarship was dedicated to refining the selection crite- ria for both the superagers and the control group, extending them from visit 2 to visit 6 of the Vallecas Project. In addition, she studied demographic, lifestyle, and medical factors that may be associated with superaging. The second half of this scholarship was developed at the University Hospital of Jena, Germany, togeth- er with Dr. Christian Gaser. During this period, he carried out a cross-sectional and longitudinal structural analysis of superagers and controls, implementing the CAT12 tool that Dr. Gaser himself has developed and for which his help has been essential.