About
A national library for federally funded AD trials
The ACTC Biobank receives, processes and stores biospecimens from Alzheimer’s trials across the country, and releases them to qualified investigators for research.
The ACTC Biobank is the biorepository of the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC), a national network of academic centers conducting federally funded clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Specimens from across the consortium are held as one collection, so material gathered for a single trial can support research well beyond it.
A trial answers the question it was designed to ask. The samples it generates can answer many more — but only if they are collected consistently, stored properly, and findable by someone who was not part of the original study. That is the Biobank’s job.
The Biobank is operated by the Biomarker Laboratory and Biorepository at the USC Epstein Family Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI), Keck School of Medicine of USC, in San Diego.
Facility
Where the collection lives
The laboratory is built for long-term biospecimen storage in monitored −80 °C freezers and liquid nitrogen. Specimens are received, processed and aliquoted on site, and biomarker analysis — single-analyte and multiplex assays on cerebrospinal fluid and plasma — is performed in the same building rather than sent out.
Investigators
Oliver Bracko, PhD
Dr. Bracko is Assistant Professor of Research Physiology and Neuroscience at USC. He investigates how blood vessels contribute to neurodegenerative disease, looking for the vascular signatures shared across Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and Huntington’s disease.
Michael S. Rafii, MD, PhD
Dr. Rafii is Professor of Clinical Neurology at USC and Associate Director of ACTC, where he leads the Medical Safety Unit. He is also Principal Investigator of ACTC-DS, the consortium’s Down syndrome trials, and studies whether Alzheimer’s disease in that population is the same disease seen elsewhere.
Brian Spencer, PhD
Dr. Spencer is Assistant Professor of Research Physiology and Neuroscience at USC. He develops gene- and peptide-based methods for getting therapeutics into the brain, particularly for diseases involving alpha-synuclein.
Charisse Winston, PhD
Dr. Winston is Assistant Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at USC. She works on blood-based biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease, studying extracellular vesicles: small particles released by brain cells and carried in the bloodstream.