Backed by a $25 million, five-year federal grant from the National Institute on Aging, USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) is launching an ambitious investigation into the complex matrix of factors that feed into developing — or being protected from — Alzheimer’s and other related forms of dementia.

This matrix, or “exposome,” refers to all environmental exposures and corresponding biological responses experienced by an individual throughout his or her life.

Exposome research examines risk and resilience influences as varied as pollution, education or policy, with the goal of understanding how resulting biological changes may lead to disease. For example, previous research at USC has shown that exposure to fine-particle pollution, or PM2.5, leads to Alzheimer’s-like brain changes in humans. Other research shows how education may improve the brain’s ability to withstand damage that leads to dementia.

Understanding Alzheimer’s “exposome” is “increasingly urgent”

“Understanding how these exposures impact health and contribute to Alzheimer’s disease is increasingly urgent as the global population ages,” said principal investigator Jinkook Lee, director of the program on global aging, health and policy at CESR. CESR is based at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Lee’s project, known as the Gateway Exposome Coordinating Center (GECC), will spearhead development of enhanced data and collaboration across disciplines to identify which aspects of the exposome affect dementia risk and how these can be mitigated.

“This center is an excellent exemplar that interconnects several of USC’s ‘moonshots’ — from health and computing to sustainability. This center further expands on other efforts of this team on the global stage such as the Longitudinal Aging Study in India, another USC priority,” said Shrikanth “Shri” Narayanan, vice president for presidential initiatives at USC.

“Efforts such as Lee’s exposome project have positioned USC at the top of U.S. universities in National Institutes of Health neuroscience awards,” said Ishwar K. Puri, senior vice president of USC’s Office of Research and Innovation. “With cutting-edge international collaborations and four prominent research centers, we believe we can get out in front of Alzheimer’s and prevent or stall the disease.”

The GECC’s efforts will bring together leading researchers from USC and other institutions, alongside key government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency. This interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial for identifying priority areas and shaping future research in the field, Lee said.

“Collaboration is a cornerstone of the GECC,” said David Knapp, a senior economist at CESR co-leading the project. “We are fostering consensus-building among researchers and stakeholders from diverse fields, ensuring a broad, inclusive approach to understanding the exposome’s role in dementia.”

Expanding long-running data project

The GECC project is an expansion of the Gateway to Global Aging Data, a long-running project with $24.7 million federal grant from the National Institute on Aging. The Gateway to Global Aging Data is a public resource for longitudinal and cross-national studies on aging over 42 countries around the world, offering data, information and tools to stimulate global aging research.

The GECC project joins another recently launched, large-scale collaboration on Alzheimer’s and dementia that is also anchored at USC.

Julie Zissimopoulos, a professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, is leading an effort to build a dementia cost model that will generate comprehensive national, annual estimates of the cost of dementia. The project, funded by an $8.2 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, could benefit patients and their families.