Each year UK Athletics, UK HealthCare and the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging partner for a game honoring legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt - a beloved leader and fierce Southeastern Conference competitor, who battled Alzheimer's disease with remarkable courage. The game is part of a week-long initiative taking place at games across the country focused on bringing awareness and recognition to the Pat Summitt Foundation, which supports nonprofit organizations delivering care to patients with Alzheimer's disease, providing resources for caregivers and families and conducting research for treatment and care. This event provides a fitting backdrop to recognize the work going on at Sanders-Brown - one of the nation's leading research centers committed to the same cause.
This year as the University of Kentucky women's basketball team took on the University of Florida, Pete Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., the R.C. Durr Foundation Chair in Alzheimer's Disease at UK, was recognized for his groundbreaking work. Nelson, professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and director of neuropathology at Sanders-Brown, served as a co-chair among the group of international researchers who discovered a new form of dementia named limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, now commonly known as LATE. LATE affects around one-third of elderly persons. Nelson with his colleagues at Sanders-Brown went on to lead the world's first clinical trial for LATE and last year helped publish the first clinical diagnostic guidelines for LATE. This work was recently featured in The New York Times.
"This recognition reflects the outstanding collective work of the large, multidisciplinary dementia research team here at the University of Kentucky. It's not about one person," said Nelson.
Nelson's grandmother, Sylvia Becker, died with Alzheimer's disease, and he watched his mother grow terrified of developing it. With this personal connection to Alzheimer's, Nelson has dedicated his life, and the past two decades at the University of Kentucky, to developing research that helps combat neurological diseases.
"My grandmother's experience shaped the course of my career," Nelson said. "She is one among so very many. Thus, honoring Pat Summitt's legacy is about more than one remarkable individual. It represents the millions who have faced Alzheimer's with strength and resilience. Remembering them keeps us focused and passionate about what we do."
Summitt was the longtime head coach of the University of Tennessee women's basketball team from 1974 through 2012. Less than a year before her retirement she learned she had early onset Alzheimer's disease. Prior to her death in 2016 at age 64, Summitt established the Pat Summitt Foundation.
