September 11, 2024

Annual UWFA Fall Lecture Dr. Tom Grabowski: The Changing Clinical Landscape of Alzheimer’s Disease Wednesday, October 9, 2024 11:30 a.m.

 

This is a time of rapid, positive change in the field of Alzheimer’s disease. There has been enormous progress in developing biomarker tests that can detect Alzheimer’s disease reliably in living patients, at the earliest symptoms, and even before that. And there are finally new medicines being approved that slow down the processes underlying Alzheimer’s disease. These developments will be a focus of Dr. Grabowski’s talk today. Dr. Thomas Grabowski is a neurologist and Washington, where he currently leads the Alzheimer’s disease clinical and research programs.  Dr. Grabowski holds the Tim B. Engle Endowed Professorship for Brain Health Innovations.

He took his Neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital.   He went on to a research-oriented fellowship in behavioral neurology and cognitive neuroscience at the University of

Iowa.   He was recruited to the University of Washington in 2009, as the Director of the UW Integrated Brain Imaging Center.  In 2012 he also became the Director of the new UW Medicine Memory and Brain Wellness Center, which established the leading Center of Excellence in Alzheimer’s disease in the state of Washington and the greater region including Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.  This clinic currently sees more than 1000 new patients and 4000 total visits annually, and involves doctors from Neurology, Psychiatry, and Geriatric Medicine.

A special feature of the Memory and Brain Wellness Center is the nationally unique Memory Hub, a memory and dementia-focused community center that includes not only the UW Memory and Brain Wellness programs, but also important community partners like the Alzheimer’s Association and important state-funded programs that reach doctors, and communities statewide.  The Memory Hub is a nationally unique program that has developed and flourished under Dr. Grabowski’s leadership.

And since 2016 Dr. Grabowski has also been the Director of the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, one of the longest established NIH ADRCs in the nation.