Affiliations and Partnerships

Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute (BRNI) has fostered a primary affiliation with West Virginia University and West Virginia University Hospitals. The comprehensive affiliation encompasses shared facilities, faculty, and programs. This relationship offers exciting opportunities to bring together the mission of a neurosciences institution with the health sciences community in Morgantown, WV. The net effect of the close cooperation and collaborations is a synergistic expansion of the research capabilities of both the Institute and WVU.

In pursuit of the Institute’s and WVU’s shared objectives, WVU offers a number of important technology assets to facilitate Institute research and recruitment. Research efforts benefit directly from the Advanced Imaging Center at WVU, which includes Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET), both critical techniques in “brain mapping” studies that investigate how the brain adapts to motion disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. The Advanced Imaging Center is also a critical asset in investigation of dementias such as Alzheimer’s, cerebrovascular disease, seizure disorders, movement disorders, and psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.

The Clinical Research Trials Unit (CRTU) at WVU bridges institutional lines and structures. The CRTU provides the full range of administrative services needed to handle the clinical trial process and works directly with investigators and clinical trial sponsors. With a major goal of the Institute being to bring laboratory discoveries into clinical application, the ability to conduct efficient and effective clinical trials through CRTU will be a major asset in future plans.

We plan to work with WVU physicians and hospitals in clinical studies and ultimately establish protocols for the identification and treatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease and other neurologic and psychiatric disorders.

BRNI brings to the WVU educational community a new concept of pioneering research leading directly to translational development and private sector partnership. The emphasis is on visionary research- breakthrough discoveries and concepts- encouraged and supported with state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary, in-depth molecular neuroscience that is guided by the objective of clinical outcomes that make a difference in the care of patients. BRNI also brings an outstanding record of world class discoveries, research publications, and patent positions. Creative partnering with a variety of other sponsoring institutions for support in the form of clinical trial sponsorship, toxicity studies, and drug supplies that leverage the resources of governmental, academic, and non-profit research institutions, provides all with new opportunities to pursue a shared goal of accelerating the path from bench to bedside.

Marine Biological Laboratory

For more than a century, hundreds of distinguished scientists from around the world have gathered to conduct research at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Every summer MBL hosts the students from the best universities, the brightest young faculty, and the most successful scientists at the pinnacle of their profession. Many of the basic synaptic mechanisms controlling the nervous system that were later found to be involved in learning and memory were first characterized at the Laboratory.

MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Western Hemisphere and is well suited for this type of research because its unique facilities are designed to allow the husbandry and rearing of marine models. Biologists value marine organisms because they serve as excellent models for understanding all living systems. They are often simple versions of more complex organisms. By studying life processes in marine animals, scientists learn how the same events occur in the human body —— and how those events are altered when disease strikes. BRNI Scientific Director, Dr. Daniel Alkon, M.D., was among the first to use a marine organism to study learning and memory.

Recently, during a year-long study, Dr. Alkon collaborated with researchers Dr. Alan Kuzirian and Dr. Herman Epstein from the MBL. Their research results suggest that bryostatin may stimulate the production of proteins in cells that are essential for long-term memory. Early Alzheimer's patients typically cannot store new long-term memories. Studies in mice and the marine snail, Hermissenda, show that bryostatin can promote the proteins required to construct permanent memory and biochemically enhance precisely this storage of long-term memory. The scientists exposed the marine snails to seawater containing bryostatin in the days leading up to memory tests. The research showed that memory could be enhanced in the snails if the animals were pre-treated with the drug.

Drs. Alkon, Epstein, and Kuzirian, continue to collaborate on Hermissenda research and are conducting additional learning and memory experiments using chemicals that may produce protein activation results similar to bryostatin.