Joshua Grill

Director of the Institute for Memory Impairments and Nerological Disorders at UCI UC Irvine

  • Irvine CA

Joshua Grill directs a major Alzheimer's disease research institute helps lead the national strategy for AD clinical trial recruitment.

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UC Irvine

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Biography

Dr. Grill has been the recipient of the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Junior Investigator Award, the Alzheimer’s Association Turken Research Prize, the Community Spirit Award from OPICA Adult Day Services, and the P. Gene and Elaine Smith Term Chair in Alzheimer’s Disease Research. He has been funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Hartford Foundation, the BrightFocus Foundation, the American Federation for Aging Research, and the University of California. He is the co-leader of the Recruitment Unit and the Internal Ethics Committee for the NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Clinical Trial Consortium. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Maria Shriver’s Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement and for Lauren Rogen Miller and Seth Rogan's HfC. In 2017, he co-chaired a workgroup as part of the NIH’s Inclusion Across the Lifespan workshop, a congressional mandate in the 21st Century Cures Act (P.L. 114-255). He was part of a working group sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association charged with creating a national strategy for recruitment to Alzheimer’s disease clinical research.

Areas of Expertise

Neuroscience
Clinical Trials
Alzheimer’s Disease
Neurodegenerative disorders
Recruitment and Retention

Accomplishments

Community Spirit Award

OPICA Adult Day Services

Junior Investigator Award

National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center

Turken Research Prize

Alzheimer’s Association

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Education

Wake Forest University School of Medicine

PhD

Neuroscience

2004

Media Appearances

Nicotinamide trial for Alzheimer’s disease shows no clear benefit in reducing tau proteins

PsyPost  online

2024-12-29

“The study was conducted in an effort to translate promising results in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease into human,” said study author Joshua Grill, a professor and co-director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “In a discovery made here at UC Irvine and replicated in a lab at the National Institute on Aging, nicotinamide counteracted the neurofibrillary tangles of disease in mice.”

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New Alzheimer’s drugs bring hope. But not equally for all patients.

The Washington Post  online

2024-01-29

Brain scans showed that the African American volunteers were less likely to have excess amyloid than White patients and thus were excluded from the trial at higher rates. Experts are baffled by the findings. Why would amyloid levels — thought to be a key driver of Alzheimer’s — be different in people with similar cognitive problems? “Is it the color of someone’s skin? Almost certainly not,” said Joshua D. Grill, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of California, Irvine. “Is it a difference in genetics? Or other health conditions, like cholesterol, blood pressure or vascular health? Or is it something else, that we haven’t measured?”

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Sound waves get Alzheimer’s drug past brain barrier, small study shows

The Washington Post  online

2024-01-08

Joshua Grill, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at University of California, Irvine, called the study “biologically very exciting,” adding that the research may help scientists understand why some Alzheimer’s drugs work better than others. … “We have the blood-brain barrier for really important reasons to protect our most important organ,” Grill said. He stressed that years of work will probably be needed before focused ultrasound treatment can become an approved option for patients: “We’re nowhere near that now.”

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Articles

Study partner types and prediction of cognitive performance: implications to preclinical Alzheimer’s trials

Alzheimer's Research & Therapy

Michelle M. Nuño, Daniel L. Gillen, Joshua D. Grill & for the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study

2019

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials require enrollment of a participant and a study partner, whose role includes assessing participant cognitive and functional performance. AD trials now investigate early stages of the disease, when participants are not cognitively impaired. This gives rise to the question of whether study partners or participants provide more information in these trials.

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Participant and study partner prediction and identification of cognitive impairment in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease: study partner vs. participant accuracy

Alzheimer's Research & Therapy volume

Mary M. Ryan, Joshua D. Grill, Daniel L. Gillen & for the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

2019

Preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials require participants to enroll with a study partner, a person who can attend visits and report changes in the participant’s cognitive ability. Whether study partners, compared to participants themselves, provide added information about participant cognition in preclinical AD trials is an open question. We tested the hypothesis that study partners provide meaningful information related to participant cognition cross-sectionally and longitudinally, and assessed whether amyloid status modified observed effects.

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Response to “Avoiding Methodological Bias in Studies of Amyloid Imaging Results Disclosure”

Alzheimer's Research & Therapy

Joshua D. Grill, Chelsea G. Cox, Kristin Harkins & Jason Karlawish

2019

The goal of “Reactions to learning a ‘not elevated’ amyloid PET result in a preclinical Alzheimer’s disease trial” was to study how learning one is not eligible for a trial based on an Alzheimer’s disease (AD) biomarker result affects willingness to be in subsequent trials, as well as how it affects other behaviors [1]. Answering this question fills a critical gap in the literature, as preclinical AD trials are increasingly common but the ideal criteria for participant inclusion remains an area of active research. Thus, a person ineligible for one trial may be eligible for another.

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