Leigh Johnson

Background

About Leigh Johnson

Dr. Leigh Johnson is the Associate Director of the Institute for Translational Research and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Neuroscience and Family Medicine. Dr. Johnson is MPI of the Health and Aging Brain Study: Health Disparities. This NIA funded project seeks to understand the biological, social and environmental factors that impact brain aging among diverse communities. She is the MPI of the HABS HD ATN study which is funded by the National Institute on Aging to examine the prevalence, progression and clinical impact of cerebral and blood-based biomarkers of amyloid (A), tau (T) and neurodegeneration (N) among ethnically diverse populations. She is the Director of the ITR Clinical Trials Core and UNTHSC site PI for the AHEAD 3-45 study. She has extensive experience with recruitment of diverse populations into research and is the Site PI of the TRC-Pad study, which is designed to establish a trial ready cohort of individuals interested in participating in AD clinical trials. Dr. Johnson’s work also examines the link between depression and cognition. She has developed and cross-validated a depressive endophenotype (DepE) of cognitive aging across multiple national and international cohorts. This work has been translated into a proof of concept clinical trial (The DEMO trial), which utilizes a precision medicine approach to identify those individuals more likely to benefit from antidepressant treatment for prevention of memory loss and potentially AD.