Cure Alzheimer's Fund Cure Alzheimer's Fund

William Klunk, M.D., Ph.D.

One of the nation’s leading experts in the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease, William E. Klunk, M.D., Ph.D., is co-director of the Alzheimer Disease Research Center at UPMC and professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Klunk is a pioneer in the field of in vivo amyloid imaging in humans.  His work spans from basic synthetic chemistry and neuropharmacological evaluation of amyloid imaging tracers to human positron emission tomography (PET) studies of these tracers.  His group’s paper on imaging the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease is the most frequently cited research paper on this disease since it was published in 2004. Dr. Klunk also was a member of the Pitt team that invented the groundbreaking Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB). PiB is a radioactive compound that, when coupled with PET imaging, can be injected into the bloodstream to enable researchers to visualize the brains of people with the memory-stealing illness and see the location and distribution of the beta-amyloid plaque deposits associated with Alzheimer’s.

Related Research:

Curcumin Collaborative Project Rudy Tanzi William Klunk 2011-02-12

Funded Research

These projects were made possible from Cure Alzheimer's Fund support.

Project Description Researchers Funding
Curcumin Collaborative Project 2010

$400,000

Selected Publications

These published papers resulted from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund support.

Ikonomovic, M. D., Klunk, W. E., Abrahamson, E. E., Wuu, J., Mathis, C. A., Scheff, S. W., Mufson, E. J., & DeKosky, S. T. Precuneus amyloid burden is associated with reduced cholinergic activity in Alzheimer disease, Neurology, July 5, 2011, Read More

Barroeta-Espar, I., Weinstock, L. D., Perez-Nievas, B. G., Meltzer, A. C., Siao Tick Chong, M., Amaral, A. C., Murray, M. E., Moulder, K. L., Morris, J. C., Cairns, N. J., Parisi, J. E., Lowe, V. J., Petersen, R. C., Kofler, J., Ikonomovic, M. D., López, O., Klunk, W. E., … Gomez-Isla, T. Distinct Cytokine Profiles in human brains resilient to Alzheimer’s pathology, Neuroiology of Disease, October 15, 2018, Read More

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