In collaboration with other NIH-funded ADC’s and the non-profit Concussion Legacy Foundation, the BU CTE Center conducts high-impact, innovative research on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and other long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes, military personnel and other people who suffer head trauma. The mission of the BU CTE Center is to conduct state-of-the-art research on CTE, including its clinical syndrome, neuropathology, pathogenesis, genetic and environmental risk factors. Our over-arching goals are to develop methods of diagnosis for CTE during life and to find a cure. The lessons we learn from CTE, a post-traumatic tauopathy, will highlight shared pathways of degeneration in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body disease and hopefully lead to effective treatments in those disorders as well.

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The Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center was established in 1996 and is in its third funding cycle. The Center is funded primarily by an Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center (ADCC) grant from the National Institute on Aging and is one of 31 federally-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Centers nationwide. Our goal is to help reduce the human and economic costs associated with Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of knowledge.

 CENC is a multi-center collaboration linking premier basic science, translational, and clinical neuroscience researchers from the VA, Department of Defense, academic universities, and private research institutes to effectively address the scientific, diagnostic, and therapeutic ramifications of mTBI and its long-term effects.

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The main focus of the CENC brain bank is to understand the effects of blast injuries and military-related concussive impacts on the human brain. There is a large effort to recruit veterans of the recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo as brain donors. 

The UNITE or Veterans Affairs -Boston University - Concussion Legacy Foundation (VA-BU-CLF) Brain Bank was established in 2008 at the Bedford VA Medical Center, Bedford, MA, under the leadership of Dr. Ann McKee. The mission of the UNITE VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank is to collect and study post-mortem brain, spinal cord, and eye tissue to better understand the pathology, etiology, and epidemiology of trauma related neurodegenerative disorders.  The  Brain Bank acquires tissue samples and clinical information from individuals exposed to repetitive head trauma, including athletes, military veterans, and other individuals who have suffered multiple head traumas, such as victims of domestic abuse.