A panel of (from left) Felicia Greenfield, Dr. Dawn Mechanic-Hamilton, Dr. David Wolk and Dr. John Trojanowski, listen to an attendee’s question at the 2015 Research Partner Thank You Breakfast.
After another year of studying neurodegenerative diseases with the help of hundreds of volunteers, the Penn Memory Center (PMC) thanked about 200 of those research participants and their family members with an informational breakfast.
The annual event, held at the Inn at Penn the morning of October 24, brought research participants face-to-face with the clinicians and coordinators working on PMC studies.
New this year was the addition of musical entertainment. Curtis Institute ArtistYear Fellow Arlen Hlusko welcomed the crowd with a cello performance, and the Penn Memory Center Choir officially started the day’s event with American tunes by Aaron Copeland.
Emeritus Director Dr. Steven Arnold returned to the University of Pennsylvania for the day, taking a few minutes to offer an update on the Metformin study. Arnold is now the Translational Neurology Head of the new Integrated Brain Center at Harvard Medical School.
Additionally, the crowd heard updates from PMC Co-Director Dr. David Wolk, Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center Director Dr. John Trojanowski, and Research Coordinator Kristin Harkins on other recent studies taking place at the Penn Memory Center. Dr. Dawn Mechanic-Hamilton and Felicia Greenfield spoke about additional programs offered by PMC, such as Cognitive Fitness, Caregiver Class, and Cognitive Comedy.
“It was truly gratifying to see so many patients and their families at the breakfast, which demonstrates their commitment to develop better treatments and care for Alzheimer’s disease, as well as reaffirming that this goal requires a team effort between us all,” Wolk said.
Once again, the crowd favorite was a Q+A panel PMC clinicians, closing out the day’s agenda. Attendees asked for feedback on other studies and thanked panelists for their work. One attendee praised the PMC brain donation program, which confirmed her father’s frontotemporal dementia diagnosis after his death.
PMC Co-director Jason Karlawish, who could not attend the event, said in a written note to attendees that “the opportunity to tell you about the progress we’ve made in our research and clinical programs and to answer your questions makes this annual event among the highlights of my service at Penn.”
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