ISTAART Relay Podcast – Vascular Cognitive Disorders PIA

Voice Over:

Hello and thank you for listening to the fourth season of the ISTAART PIA Relay Podcast brought to you by Dementia Researcher. ISTAART is a professional society and part of the Alzheimer’s Association representing scientists, physicians, and other dementia professionals active in researching and understanding the causes and potential treatments of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

In this five-part series, we’ve asked members of the ISTAART professional interest areas to take turns interviewing their colleagues and being interviewed themselves with the interviewee going on to be the next episode’s interviewer. We’re sure you’ve listened to these before, so you’ll know what to expect. We’ll be releasing one of these podcasts each day in the buildup to the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, which this year takes place online and in Amsterdam. So, sit back, turn up the volume and be ready to hear about these individuals’ amazing research fields, the work of their PIAs and just what you can expect at this year’s conference. Thank you for listening.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Hello, everyone and thanks for tuning in. I’m Maura Malpetti. I am a Race Against Dementia Alzheimer’s Research UK Fellow and I work at the University of Cambridge. I am the program chair of the Frontotemporal and Related Disorders PIA and today I’m delighted to be talking with Beth Eyre. Hi, Beth.

Beth Eyre:

Hi, Maura. How are you?

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Fine. Very excited to be here and interviewing you. Can I start by asking you to introduce yourself and tell us with which PIA you are involved?

Beth Eyre:

As you said, I’m Beth and I am actually kind of associated with the Vascular Cognitive Disorders PIA. I’m a researcher at the University of Sheffield. I’m kind of between things at the moment because I have just submitted my PhD thesis. Yay!

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Oh, congratulations.

Beth Eyre:

Thank you. I’m waiting to defend, but I have started a post-doc position, so I’m staying in the same area but learning some new methods and still staying in the vascular contributions to dementia region, which is really exciting.

Yes, so I came across the vascular PIA, over a year ago now, I think. I’ve done a couple of things with the Alzheimer’s Association and ISTAART. They have a conference called Neuroscience Next. I got involved with that. I went on their committee and that was super exciting and lots of opportunities for early-career researchers there. Then I was also super lucky to be selected as an ISTAART ambassador last year, so that gave me a really good insight into all the different PIAs.

I got to go to the PIA Day and be a volunteer there, which was great. I went to some of the vascular sessions, and I thought, “Oh, this is really exciting stuff. I’m really interested in this area.” Obviously, I’ve been researching it for a little bit, but I’m definitely not an expert yet. I think it’s really cool that you can join even when you don’t feel like you’re an expert and you can have opportunities to get involved. Then this year I was selected onto the executive committee as the student post-doc representative. That’s why I’m here to chat with you.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Oh, that’s excellent. Maybe before going into a bit more into your research and what your PIA is doing, maybe you can just mention for who is listening to how people can apply for this ambassador scheme, because I think it’s a very interesting one and maybe people are not aware of that.

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so the ambassador scheme, I think it started a couple of years ago, but over the past years, it’s really developed into this whole year-long program. To apply, I think the application’s usually open. I don’t know about the date, but it’s usually February time, I think. Then they open and, on the questions, they might ask you why you want to be an ambassador, what you think you can bring to the role. They might want you to give some examples of things you’ve done, but they really just want people to show their enthusiasm for ISTAART and their research area. It’s not about how many papers you’ve got or all the science. It’s about you and what you can bring to the role, which I think is really nice, because a lot of the things sometimes in academia are all about what’s your h index, but this is actually about you and you get to be you, which is fantastic.

Then as part of the program you get to go to the main Alzheimer’s Association conference, the AAIC and yearly conference, annual conference and you get to wear your purple shirt and be in the face of the role and help out in sessions, meet people from all around the world. So, you get to meet all their ambassadors from around the world, which is super exciting. I met some people last year and we’ve all stayed in contact. I’ve visited some of them in their countries, which has been great.

And then throughout the year, there’s also other opportunities for you to do all the conferences and just network with people who are either at your level or above. And I think it opens the doors to give you the confidence to apply for certain things because I don’t think I’d have applied for the executive committee role if I’d not been exposed, I guess to the association, to ISTAART. So, I think it’s a great steppingstone.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Oh, this sounds like an excellent community. So, all students out their post-docs please look at the ISTAART website to hear more about these. Excellent, thank you. So perhaps we can start a bit more by going back to the research and you can tell us a bit more about your own research and how it came about when you became a dementia researcher.

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, thank you. So, I started my PhD back in 2019, so a couple years ago now. It feels like a very long time ago. A lot has happened since then. And my project is looking at blood flow changes in Alzheimer’s disease and I’m quite interested in how blood flow may change in Alzheimer’s disease. And I’m specifically interested in how specific proteins that build up in the brain in Alzheimer’s such as amyloid beta, and how that can impact brain blood flow.

And another avenue of my work has been looking at comorbidities. So, when people have more than one kind of illness or disease at the same time. So, I’ve been quite interested in how heart disease and how that can impact the vasculature brain, blood vessels and blood flow and also how Alzheimer’s and atherosclerosis or heart disease can interact. So that’s been really exciting to research.

And I came to dementia research because I’ve always been quite interested in the brain, and I think as most people probably do know or know of someone who has been impacted by a brain disease that can lead to dementia. And I think there’s just so much more research that is needed in the area. We still don’t have any treatments that can stop or stop the progression or just hold the disease in its tracks. Obviously, we’ve had some exciting stuff this year with some potential new treatments. Obviously, we still need a lot more research into those and are they going to be available for people? Are they going to be expensive and things like that?

So, I’m in an area where we’re looking to see if increasing blood flow can potentially aid the clearance of the proteins, which can lead to these symptoms of dementia. So, I think it’s a really exciting, interesting area to be in and hopefully, ’cause it’s quite a big area at the moment, which is really exciting. There seems to be lots of things going on, lots of new research outgoings and things. So hopefully in the near future, we’ll have some more treatments available for people. ‘Cause obviously at the moment there doesn’t seem to be that yet. But I think everyone’s quite hopeful.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Oh, excellent. Super interesting area. So could I ask you if there are some people in the audience who are more curious about this topic, how can we improve our blood flow for example, there are some aspects that people could take care of their lifestyle that you would suggest for example. I think it’s a big factor maybe in …

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so I think, I don’t know when the paper came out, but it was something like, I think it was in the Lancet and it was like 40% of dementia can be preventable. And a lot of these factors that were preventable were lifestyle factors so healthy diets, exercising, keeping the lower blood pressure, limiting your drinking. Having hearing checks was actually found to be really important because of the links between limited hearing and resulting in late dementia. Sleep was a massive one. I love to sleep so I find sleep research super interesting. So yeah, that was another big one. Air pollution and things like that.

And I think a lot of the charities as well are really starting to talk about those things and just inform people because a lot of people aren’t aware and you can’t be aware if you’re not told, right, if we are not getting the science and promoting that, promoting the research that we all do. It’s really important that we do communicate that to people because it is really important and you can’t make a change unless you know, right?

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Yeah, absolutely. And related to that, I don’t know if this is the right term, but you are a good influencer in that term. So, you are involved with a lot of public engagements. How is this work also related to the PIA? Are you active in the communication part of your PIA or is it more something that you do as hobby and raising awareness about dementia?

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so in the PIA, I’m not actually the communications person but that would probably be something I’d be looking at into the future because you don’t just have to do one position. I’ll talk about that a bit more in the podcast. You can do multiple positions, which is really good. But I do, they have vascular cognitive disorders and have a Twitter account. So, I’m always retweeting from that. I’m always retweeting from ISTAART. I know there’s a couple of ISTAART alumni who do a lot of tweeting and Instagram posts about ISTAART, which is great because we want to be attracting early career researchers in, and there’s a lot of early career researchers who have science accounts on Instagram who they’re kind of for fun. They do a lot of communication about that work and what they’re involved in, which is great. But yeah, maybe the communications thing will be in a couple of years’ time.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Well, we’ll be here to see your next steps. So, going back to research, what do you think are the hot topics, the exciting areas of your field at the moment and how do you think your PIA can contribute to this hot topic or also developing the field?

Beth Eyre:

I guess who you’re asking for the hot topic just depends what they’re interested in, and these are what I’m interested in, but I know the PIA as a whole are interested in them ’cause we do have things going on which relate to them. So, for me, the first thing is comorbidities, as I mentioned it is part of my own research area, but I think especially when we’re thinking about the models of Alzheimer’s research or the brain diseases that cause dementia, a lot of the preclinical, really early research was done in these really pure models. So, it was just genetic Alzheimer’s disease and things like that. But when you think of Alzheimer’s in life, I like to say it doesn’t really happen in a vacuum. People usually don’t just have Alzheimer’s. They have maybe high blood pressure or heart disease or other comorbidities. And lots of the comorbidities that people do have are related to vasculature.

And so, with the vascular PIA, I think it’s super important that we look at those comorbidities. And in our research when we’re doing the research is maybe including those comorbidities. ‘Cause I mean I’m from a psychology background and a lot of the studies are very specific subject groups and I think it’s really important that we’re opening that out, I guess, to make sure that we are including all these comorbidities if that’s going to be more relatable and translatable to when we hopefully find treatments.

So that’s the comorbidities aspect and what the PIA is doing with that is we have a number of working groups, and our working groups have, we work to make papers sort of thing. So, anyone can join the working group who’s a part of the PIA. So, you can have an early career, you can be more senior and it’s a really good way to get people with different expertise, different career stages together working on one document where there’s a gap in the research.

So, I am currently in one with a number of people from our PIA and it’s about models and mechanisms of vascular cognitive disorders and we talk about brain vasculature all the way to omics methods to comorbidities. And we’re always thinking about how we can translate all of our different models. So, it’s a work group to get together, learning about all the models, what we know from all these models and how we can then try and translate things. And so that’s a really cool working group that’s fun at the moment. And in that I mentioned omics. I am not an omics researcher, I must say, and I’m just kind of getting interested in it, but I will definitely leave that to the experts. It’s very complicated.

But another hot topic in our area is the methods we can use to research vasculature. So there’s transcriptomics, things like that, genomics and lots of studies this year have come out looking at, I think it’s RNA sequencing of the specific cells of the vasculature because the vasculature is super complex, lots of different cell types and in order for us to treat disorders of the vessels, we need to understand the vessels. So, I think those research methods are really exciting and they can just kind of give us a molecular understanding of the vessels, can hopefully give us ideas of where to target treatments and things like that.

And then also my final hot topic for me and definitely the PIA, ’cause this is again another working group is clearance mechanisms of the brain. So, in Alzheimer’s disease, we do think that the clearance of the proteins that build up is impacted. So, we can get more proteins accumulating in the brain and we also have issues with getting rid of those proteins. And so, a lot of research areas are looking at how can we get rid of these proteins, how can we wash away these proteins from the brain and by washing away these proteins, can we increase cognitive scores? Can we reduce the amyloid plaque? Will it protect our vasculature? So, I think that’s another really interesting area. It’s also very interesting because nobody’s decided which clearance pathway is the right one. There are loads of debates about it, which I find really interesting.

But we have another working group which is all about clearance pathways and they are working on a manuscript at the moment, and I think if I’m correct, I think they’re wanting to submit it very soon. So very exciting. Yeah, we do have manuscripts coming out quite a lot. I know we’ve just had one acceptable publication about a clinical trial and hypertension, I think if I’m correct in saying. So yes, very exciting PIA, loads of working groups to join whatever your interests are. You can join more than one if you want. You can go off to join any, you can just see what comes out of them and maybe decide to join things in the future. I think that’s what’s really nice about the PIA, it’s definitely there’s a lot going on in it. I think I would say I was really surprised when I joined and how many options there were for me to get involved, which is nice.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Yeah, it sounds like a very interesting PIA and very active PIA with a lot of working groups, a lot of interests. So maybe you can mention a bit more, how is the structure of this PIA, if there is a committee, because you mentioned this working group, but there is a committee that overlooks the working groups, there are leaders in the working groups. How is this structured?

Beth Eyre:

So, I think as most PIAs have, there’s an executive committee to oversee the PIA as a whole and all the operations. And on that executive committee you have a chair, a vice chair, then a programs chair. I think you said you were programs chair. There’s a communications chair who does all the talking about it on social media and just talks to everyone about what’s going on in the PIA. And then you have executive committee members at different career stages. Then you have the student and post-doc trainee members, one of those is where I am. And then what I think is really good about the organization, the PIAs, is that you also have the past chairs as part of the executive committee. So, it’s a really good way to make sure the rollover happens quite well so people know what’s going on.

And then with these working groups, I think how they run is they get an idea of they think this is a new hot topic, let’s look into that. And then people volunteer to be on that working group and then within that, people decide to take up another role on that. So, there might be someone who does the minutes, there might be a leader of that, and the leaders of these working groups can be early career researchers. I know I think it was last year it was published, but there was an early career perspective from a vascular cognitive disorders PIA, all about the early career perspective on vascular cognitive disorders. And that was led by an early career researcher. So, it’s great not only for more for people who’ve been around in the field for longer, but it’s great for incoming people who want to develop their networks and see how it works working with people from all around the world on a paper because that’s really exciting. It’s something you probably wouldn’t get to do if you weren’t a part of a PIA.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

That’s a very good opportunity for all early career researchers out there interested in this topic. Very excellent. So, it seems that you have been quite productive as a PIA in the last year with all these working group papers coming out as well. What are the main plans for next year if you can reveal some of them?

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so like I say I’m quite new. So, I only started joining the executive committee meetings back in, I think it was May. So, I’ve got a bit of an insight into what happened in the past year and some of our ideas for the future. But I think the main thing is just to keep the momentum going ’cause they seem like the group has great momentum. Like you said, it’s super active. We’ve got loads of different working groups and I think the hope is that the models and mechanisms working group that we can start writing our paper and hopefully get that out maybe next year, I think we said and then, yeah, and maybe keep applying for when it comes onto to AAIC, applying for focus sessions and things like that.

We constantly put on webinars. I think even just this year, just as an example of a couple, we had webinars about white matter hyperintensities, what causes them and then we had sessions, a deeper dive into those. We also had sessions about clearance and how clearance pathways are in the brain.

So, there’s constantly things going on throughout the year. So, I think the hope is that we continue to do webinars and make sure that everyone can get those, especially through ISTAART and just to continue to work on those working groups and get our PIA out there at the annual conference.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Yeah, and you mentioned webinars where people can sign up for these and if there are recordings, I think there is a pre-established method for PIAs, but maybe you can tell us a bit more.

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so with the webinars, so you usually get, if you join the PIA, you can join the PIA, go onto the ISTAART website, which has been newly renovated. Lovely. So, if you go onto the website, you can get access to all the PIAs, but obviously you want to go all the way to the bottom, to the vascular cognitive disorders PIA and join ours.

And then through that, once you’ve joined those, you’ll start to get information from the PIA about maybe webinars that are happening or even the weekly newsletters you get from ISTAART will have information about grants, webinars that are happening and you can click on those, you can register for them and then you’ll be sent the links and they’re all free. They’re also shown on Twitter. So, when they’re happening, you can again register for them using the links on Twitter and I’m pretty sure that the videos for those stay up and you can access those after the webinar. So, we do have educational ones and we all have them about journals. So, I think that’s a great tool. I think for anyone who’s either new to the area or just wants to solidify their knowledge a bit more.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Yes, yeah, I agree. It’s a fantastic resource. So that is online and open to everyone. And also, now membership for students is free. So, I mean, it’s excellent. But you mentioned the hot word AAIC, which stands for the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference. So, are you going to the conference? Are you presenting, your PIA is organizing something?

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so excitingly, the PIA has a lot going on at the conference this year, but very sadly I can’t go.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Oh.

Beth Eyre:

Yeah. So, because my viva is very soon after. I’m defending my PhD, so it’s a very good reason for me not to go. But it’s a massive shame because I loved the conference last year. It was a great way to meet lots of different people and really diversify my network, which is great for all researchers, but especially early career researchers. I think it’s really important.

But yeah, so the PIAs have quite a lot going on. So, they have an ISTAART immersive session titled Evaluating the Human Vasculature for Vascular Cognitive in Terms of Dementia. So that’s on Friday. It’s a whole session on the 14th of July. So, it’s before the main conference. So yeah, if you’re interested in vasculature and vascular cognitive disorders, I think that’s a really exciting one for you to go to.

We also have the PIA Day, I mentioned that I think it’s the day before the conference starts, so it’s the whole day just for the professional interest areas and you get to see what’s going on in the PIAs and meet people from the PIAs who you might have been working with for the whole year and not met them in person or just from other PIAs too because everyone’s in the same area. So that’s always on the Saturday before, so they’ve got a session of that. So, you’ll be able to see some of the work and I think it’s a panel discussion. So that’s going to be exciting.

Also, the PIA was successful in getting a focused research session and I’m pretty sure this is on the actual day, at the actual conference, main conference. And this I think is about the incidence, pathogenesis, and clinical implications of amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, so ARIA, and then there was also a successful perspective session, and this was about closing the sex agenda gap in dementia and then homing in on the vasculature, really focusing on that.

So, there’s some really exciting things going on at the conference. Very sad that I won’t be able to attend, but I’ll be able to catch up. ‘Cause if you’re an ISTAART member, I think you can get access to quite a lot of things online. So even if people aren’t able to go, they should be able to have access to some of these things, which is very exciting for everyone.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Well, it’s very sad that you will not be there, but we look forward to seeing you next year as a doctor. Yeah, good luck with viva. So, I guess a lot of people that are listening to this podcast, maybe they are considering joining the PIA and all the PIAs and maybe they’re interested in this field. Maybe you could mention, give an example, especially for people that are not involved in this field of your daily work and daily job, how your day as dementia research in this field looks like.

Beth Eyre:

So, kind of what I do on a daily basis and how that maybe relates to the PIA?

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Mm-hmm.

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, so like I said I do lots of research in Alzheimer’s disease and looking at clearance and blood flow. So how my research relates to the PIA is that I’m quite directly related to it I would say. Obviously, I’m quite interested in the vascular and things like that, but when I first started, I definitely didn’t really have much of an understanding. I was very new to the area, and I think actually starting to join the PIA early would’ve been really good for me because I would’ve been able to look at the webinars, get the educational videos, and see how that relates to my work. And I think also by starting your network early you can maybe think about future careers and things like that.

And by joining the PIA you, like I said, because there’s on the committee or just within the whole PIA, there’s it bringing together really similar focused people who everyone’s got some interest. You don’t have to be an expert. You just might be interested in vasculature, or you might be part of another PIA or another research area, but you might be thinking, oh I think vasculature could be an interesting topic to maybe go into.

And I think by joining the PIA you can see some of the main work that goes on and you might be able to create your own collaborations from it. And I know there’s definitely people within our PIA who have started collaborations. The networking is great for early career researchers and like I say, you get the opportunity to work if you want to on a committee with people who are maybe professors, they might head of a school or something like that and you wouldn’t really have that opportunity without the PIA I would say. I don’t think there’s another society or group where you can do that working on such close levels and you’re getting as much out of it as other people are.

And I think that’s what’s really exciting and yeah, just massive opportunities for career development, especially with those working groups. If you have the time, obviously I know everyone’s time is quite limited, but if you do have the time, you can really take a massive role in those working groups and if you’re getting a paper out of it that’s really exciting. But it’s not just a paper, it’s getting that network out of it and working globally as well.

I think that is the point of ISTAART and that’s the point of the PIAs. We want to bring together people who are interested in vasculature, whatever your interest is. Maybe you might be a preclinical researcher, maybe you work in models of Alzheimer’s disease, maybe you work in clinical trials. The point is that we are wanting to, or maybe you want to do all these things, right? By getting everyone together with the vascular cognitive disorders here, it allows that opportunity to happen. And I think that’s what’s really exciting about vascular PIA. And I was told today it’s the best PIA, but it is the best yeah.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

Well on that we can debate. No, but I think you already answered my next question why some of the listeners should join the PIA and you gave an excellent example of how this can be a very productive part of your life in terms of networking, building career, et cetera. But maybe you also mentioned all these working groups and there is a lot of interest in different fields, are you considering collaborating in the future with all their PIAs? For example, I’m the program’s chair of the frontotemporal dementia and related disorders and I think always the vascular aspect is overlooked in other conditions that is not Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia of course. So, what can we do as different PIAs to work together in this field?

Beth Eyre:

That’s a really good question. I think I’m not sure if our PIA has collaborated with other PIAs previously. I think they may have, but yeah, you’re right. The only way we can figure new things out is by working with people who aren’t in your research area. And I think the way that other groups could work together is just bringing the different expertise like for you guys, you’re imaging and things like that. Or people in the vasculature may not know about specific imaging methods. And it’s using our understanding of the vasculature and how you can you image it and things like that. I think that’s really exciting. But if nobody wants to collaborate, we could chat about collaborating. ‘Cause I think yeah, our group is very collaborative, and I think there’s definitely scoped to collaborate with many different PIAs, especially with imaging and vasculature.

It makes sense. We want to see what’s happening on those vessels. It’s just figuring out the specific methods that may be the best for that or the best for the specific vessels you’re looking at. ‘Cause obviously different vessels in the body might be harder to see. The surface vessels might be super easy to image, whereas some of those really small capillaries might be a bit harder to image. And it’s making sure that the different expertise from the different groups and the different PIAs can talk to each other and can help maybe do that, I guess.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

And maybe following on that, if someone is listening and would like to look at data out there, of course now there are also, everyone is interested in big data. There are some networks that you would suggest they look at also beyond the PIA like some big studies that people can access, apply for data and collaborations.

Beth Eyre:

Yeah, I mean unfortunately I don’t actually know any major big ones off the top of my head, but I do know that there’s definitely, I know a lot of people who do the sort of big data research. They do put it into open repositories. So maybe going on open science framework, they might have some information on things like that because yeah, the point of doing the big data is you want people to use the data. I know about the Brain Biobank and things like that, and they don’t just collect information about the brain, they have lots of other different things that they’ve collected, and people are able to correlate with that. They have imaging, I think they have imaging and there’s a lot for imaging and I think maybe, I’m pretty sure there are some sort of vasculature and like I said, I’m not sure of them off the top of my head, but within the big ones are probably, they probably have information on the vasculature.

They might do heart scans because I know, ’cause I’m interested in heart disease and atherosclerosis. I know a lot of these different big data, big data things, don’t know the word for them. They do maybe scan of the heart. So, you can look at plaque load and things like that and you’re able to correlate that with blood pressure or do people take hypertensive medication and things like that. So, there’s these massive data sets. There’s a lot that can be done with them and I think we’re only just looking at the tip of the iceberg with them. So, there’s definitely loads more we can do with them, which is really exciting. I think as an early career researcher, it makes it a more of an exciting field.

Dr Maura Malpetti:

And there could be another collaboration with one of the interviewees of this series from the artificial intelligence PIA. So, there is a lot of cross-matching between PIAs. Well, excellent. I think we are reaching the end of these podcasts. Thank you so much to Beth for taking the time to join us today and good luck with your viva. You will be brilliant, I’m sure. And thank you everyone for listening. You can find profiles of myself and my brilliant guest and information on how to become involved in ISTAART on our website@dementiasearch.nihr.ac.uk and also at www.alz.org/ISTAART. There is a link in the show notes here.

And I’m Maura and you have been listening to the Relay podcast from Dementia Researcher and the Alzheimer’s Association. We’ll be back tomorrow. So hit the subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast app to ensure you don’t miss any of the episodes. Thank you so much, Beth. Thank you everyone.

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