Training the Next Generation: How the Research Education Component Supports Early Career Researchers

Intro: I'm Dr. Nathaniel Chin, and you're listening to Dementia Matters, a podcast about Alzheimer's disease. Dementia Matters is a production of the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Our goal is to educate listeners on the latest news in Alzheimer's disease research and caregiver strategies. Thanks for joining us. 

Dr. Nathaniel Chin: Welcome back to Dementia Matters. Educating, mentoring and training the next generation of researchers is a critical focus for the over 30 National Institute on Aging designated Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers across the United States. This work is led by the Research Education Component, also known as REC, at each center, which develops and supports educational activities and programs for students, junior faculty and other early career researchers to meet the nation's Alzheimer's disease-related research needs. One of these key activities is the annual Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Research Day. Happening on April 22, 2025, this event is designed to encourage collaboration and promote scientific thought among faculty, students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines across the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. In honor of this year's ADRD Research Day, I'm joined by two of this year's lightning presenters, Isa Hayde and Dr. YangYeh, to discuss their research careers and how REC has impacted their journeys as researchers, as well as to share a bit about their lightning presentations. Isa is an undergraduate student at UW-Madison, double majoring in genetics and genomics and life sciences communications, and a member of Dr. Lindsay Clark's lab, which focuses on developing effective strategies to disclose Alzheimer's disease risk-related information. She's also a member of the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute's New Friends program, which brings UW students together with people living with the diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease or another form of dementia. Dr. Yang Yeh is a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Dudley Lamming's lab, which focuses on understanding how nutrient-responsive signaling pathways can be harnessed to promote health and longevity. He's also a member of the REC Scholars Program. Yang's current projects focus on the intersection of diet, metabolism and aging. Isa and Yang, welcome to Dementia Matters.

Isa Hayde: Thank you.

Chin: Yang, I'm going to start with you. How did you get involved in Alzheimer's research and what led you to your current focus on diet and aging?

Dr. Yang Yeh: Hello, Nate. First of all, thank you for having me here on your podcast. It is quite an honor. I have been thinking about how to answer this question, and it does go back quite far. As a student, I have always been interested in aging itself. Why does one person live longer, and why does someone have such long and healthy lives while others do not? Of course, aging is one of the main risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. As a graduate student, I did my PhD in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. For the past five years, I have been working at the University of Wisconsin in metabolism and longevity research. Now I am sort of looking to put together my two areas of expertise in neuroscience and also metabolism to apply my training for the past 10 years the best I could to make a difference.

Chin: One of the things I like about your answer, Yang, is that you started with the positive—why some people live so long. That is a really good way of looking at it. I know we can look at the disease part of it—why do people develop Alzheimer's or neurodegenerative diseases—but why do people live such long, healthy, productive lives, and how can we all get there? Of course, you’re focusing on diet and metabolism. For people who are not in science, what do you say to them when they are like, well, what exactly is metabolism? I think a lot of people might think, well, is that just sort of my body's processing of nutrients? Is that why some people are thin and some people aren’t? How do you think about metabolism? 

Yeh: Well, the way I look at it is that metabolism is the way our body generates energy from food. This is the bridge of the relationship itself between our biology and food. What we found in the Lamming Lab, and also what a lot of other labs have confirmed, is that what we eat really changes metabolism. So it is not what you were suggesting –  if we all ate the same food, some of us could be thin and some of us could be a little obese. What is really happening—well, what could also happen—of course, genetics is a factor. What we eat also determines our metabolism as well. So it goes both ways, which I believe it's a little bit counterintuitive. That's sort of what we're trying to uncover in research right now.

Chin: That is so incredibly important, right? We so often will blame people for why they might not be appearing in a healthy way—oh, it is the way you are, it is your genetics—when really it can be food. We can change these things, and we can help people with the right food choices. I think we have had Dr. Barb Bendlin on in the past, who talks about the gut microbiome and how that could be a factor too in a person's metabolism. Not just their own genetics or the food, but also the gut microbes in the person's own intestines. Now for you, Isa, you are an undergraduate here at UW. How did you become interested in Alzheimer's research? How did you get involved in Dr. Lindsay Clark's lab?

Hayde: Well, I always had an interest, coming into my undergraduate years at UW, of Alzheimer's and other related cognitive diseases just due to my own personal family history with them. I knew that if I was going to get involved in research on campus, I wanted to be in that area of research. I wanted to find a lab that had a cross-section between genetics and also Alzheimer's so I actually went and sought out Lindsay's lab personally. I kind of just went through and I read through all of the faculty's bios and everything and I liked what she did. I thought it was a great cross-section, so I reached out and then it just happened that her lab was open for an undergraduate position. They just brought me right in.

Chin: Well, that very fortunate of you to be able to find Dr. Clark's lab online and then be able to connect with her and join her lab. Was there something about returning results that really spoke to you, or is it really the clinical focus to Dr. Clark's lab?

Hayde: Yeah, when I came in as an undergraduate, still, I'm looking to apply to genetic counseling programs for post-grad plans. I really found it interesting about disclosing this sensitive information to participants. I thought that that would be a really great insight into what the genetic counseling field could offer, getting to work face-to-face with people and giving this sensitive information and helping people process what these results can mean. I thought that it was a great intro into what my own future career could look like. Getting to cross that over with my own personal interests of Alzheimer's and everything–it just seemed great, and it has been great.

Chin: Now, my next question is for the two of you. Like we said in our introduction, two key components of REC's mission are offering research, education and training opportunities to early career researchers, as well as mentorship from researchers in the field. How has REC supported your development as researchers so far, either through educational opportunities or connecting you to different mentors and labs at UW? Yang, let’s start with you. 

Yeh: The REC program has been very, very crucial in my stage of development in my career. I am a postdoc, which means that I am in this stage between being a trainee and becoming an independent researcher. REC provides all these training opportunities for us and also resources in order to carry out our research, as well as connect with other trainees who are going to be my future colleagues, and also give us the opportunity to attend different conferences and all of these talks that are occurring on campus to notify us. Overall, it is working really well in providing resources and driving the development of this workforce that we really need in Alzheimer's disease research. You might have heard that there is a lack of postdoc researchers or, in general, just the workforce itself is dwindling because it is a very difficult field, to be honest. A lot of people sort of switch boats after they get their PhD. They get a terminal degree and sort of switch fields to not continue in research. I do think REC is helping a lot in this manner by helping people go through their career and providing that training that we do need in order to carry out our experiments.

Chin: Helpful, but also needed, Yang. It sounds like it is really something that is facilitating a network and support for a smaller group of really well-trained individuals, but who are needing that resource. For you, Isa, as an undergrad, can you speak to how REC has helped you?

Hayde: The biggest thing that I noticed about getting to come in as an undergraduate research assistant was how personalized everyone made this experience for me. People were always wondering what I was interested in doing and what I was interested in knowing and really tailoring my experience to that. Getting to be a part of the disclosure project, which was my personal interest coming in, that was always the focus from then on. Every single person that I've come into contact with, through any project that I've worked on, has always been more than willing to help me out in any way possible and to bring me in on anything or help me out with anything that was needed. It's also always been up to me how involved I wanted to be in everything. Having opportunities like the Alzheimer's Disease Research Day and everything has always been super great. I've been a part of the lab for almost two years now, and I've gotten to work on a ton of different projects, work with a ton of different people. Every single experience I've had has been so influential on what I've known and what I've come to be a part of.

Chin: Yang, you've recently become a REC scholar here at the Wisconsin ADRC. Can you tell us a bit about the REC scholar program, how you got involved with it and the project you'll be working on over the next two years?

Yeh: Yes, so the REC program scholarship program itself supports early career investigators. It will support both postdocs like me and also young faculty. I am a postdoc so they do provide me funding for some of my research experiments. I think, most importantly, they support me going to conferences such as the annual ADRC meeting that is occurring in a couple of weeks. I will be attending those. Those are very important for me to connect with my fellow colleagues and also understand what is the cutting edge in Alzheimer's disease research. I think most importantly, it incorporated me into this community that we have at Wisconsin. I am able to reach out to different training faculty here to receive whatever training I need. For example, I needed to learn how to collect tissue–cerebrospinal fluid–from mice. That is a very difficult task that only few people in the country know. I am able to just ask basically our coordinator, Sheryl, who here knows this technique. She knows exactly who, and she actually knows exactly when they started doing this technique. I send them an email and everybody is very understanding and very willing to train others. I think that is one of the most valuable aspects of the REC scholarship.

Chin: That's a very interesting question, Yang. Who knows how to collect spinal fluid from a mouse? As someone who has collected spinal fluid from a human being and trained to do that in medical practice, I have no idea how you would do that in a mouse. I'm grateful for individuals like Sheryl, the coordinator for REC, who was able to find that for you. I am curious, but I think that will be for a separate podcast. Isa, you're also a part of the New Friends program organized by the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute. How did you get involved with New Friends and what has the program taught you? Would you recommend it to other aspiring health and research professionals?

Hayde: Yes, I heard about the program through Sheryl, our lovely education outreach coordinator. The opportunity had presented itself to me at the beginning of this year, so this is my first year being a part of the program. It lasted the fully both semesters. It's been absolutely amazing. It's been such a great experience. It really helped open up my thinking and understanding of what people actually go through who are actually affected by these cognitive impairments and also their families and their caregivers. Getting to hear about their struggles one-on-one has really opened up my mind to a bunch of different ways of thinking. It's one thing to get to work on the research and get to be behind the scenes with the data and all of the information that we have, but it's another to be able to see how much this impacts people who are a part of our research cohorts and who are actively looking for and waiting for these results that we're getting. It's been super great. I have absolutely loved getting to know my mentor and their family, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I think it's so important that people who are in this field or who are just looking to go into any health-related field be able to understand where these people are at so you can meet them there and meet their families there, and get to hear what their needs are directly. It's been absolutely amazing. It's a great program. I'd recommend it to anybody.

Chin: You have had this nice blending of research as well as that clinical experience of being with individuals, as you have said, that are living with cognitive impairment. It is hard to imagine you having that opportunity outside of a structured program like the REC opportunity.

Hayde: Yeah, definitely. The way that it’s all set up, not only do we get to meet with our mentors every month on our own–we set up our own activities–but every month we also have an educational meeting as a cohort all together with different presenters. We do different activities. Every meeting we have a different focus on what we are trying to learn, what kind of conversations we are having. We hear from different professionals in the field and we get to hear from other caregivers and everything. We have done caregiver panels where we get to hear their experiences, get to hear their stories. We have heard from multiple different kinds of professionals throughout the state of Wisconsin about what they do, what their jobs look like. We’ve also done even simulations that help simulate what our mentors are experiencing in a sensory way. We have open conversations with one another about what our experiences have been like, what we’ve noticed about the people that we get to spend time with, and what struggles they are mostly focusing with. Getting to have a structured program but also having the ability to go out and do activities with our caregivers that they are personally interested in, that we are personally interested in, has been a great combination of the program and what it has become.

Chin: At Research Day, you’ll both be giving lightning presentations to present your research in front of an audience of researchers and students here at UW. Yang, yours is titled “High and Low Dietary Protein Intake in Alzheimer's Disease”. That title definitely caught my attention. Can you share with us a bit about your presentation? In particular, what were you looking for and what were your findings?

Yeh: Yes, so there is actually a lot of background to this that I am not going to be able to discuss in the three-minute lightning presentation. I would like to use this opportunity to give a little bit more background information on how we came about to this project. In the realm of diet as medicine, or eating different food as a way to radically change your biological health, this is not something that is new. This goes back maybe 100 years or so, where people started to realize that you can eat different types of food and that is going to have a different effect on your diseases. What has been known for a long time is that if you have a calorie deficit for a long time, your body is going to clear out all the junk that is in there and you are going to have better health in the long term. What we started to realize is that if you just restrict protein intake—so if you are on a low-protein diet—you also have a lot of benefits that reflect a better metabolic health: higher metabolic rate, a better ability to handle blood glucose, and it also extends lifespan in animals. We have done this study for quite a while, and I was very surprised to see that in Alzheimer's disease research, patients that are on higher protein dietary intake have a lower amount of their biomarkers for Alzheimer's, such as A-beta (Aβ). That contradicts the data that we have in animals, where a low-protein diet improves the Alzheimer's disease symptoms, including A-beta (Aβ) load. That is the underlying motivation for the study that I am carrying out now, where we essentially cover a wide range of protein concentrations from seven to 60 percent. What I am finding that is really interesting is that at the extreme edges of the protein concentrations—so  at 7 and 60—they are both giving a lot of improvements to the animals' metabolic health. The animals do not get fat. In fact, they are much leaner than animals that are eating the middle protein concentrations. That is what I find to be the most interesting result right now, a sort of U-shaped response to dietary protein.

Chin: Now, do these mice have Alzheimer's disease?

Yeh: The cohort for the Alzheimer's disease mice, it's a little bit low. A lot of these data are preliminary at the moment. It appears that they also receive the benefits from the low and the high, but the benefit appears to be significantly dampened compared to the wild type mice that are receiving these diets.

Chin: If you are receiving a low percentage of protein, are you giving them a high percentage of what else? Is it a lot of fat, a lot of carbohydrates? What is the other makeup?

Yeh: Yes. As we replace the proteins with carbohydrate, you could see this as a high carbohydrate diet because we, as you pointed out, need to make the diet isocaloric so the energy density is the same. That is one way to look at it, but over time, or in the past 10 years or so, through many, many different experiments where they alternate all three macronutrient compositions, they sort of figured out that yes, from fat you'll get all the results with cholesterol that we understand will happen with high-fat diet. Between that and metabolic rate itself, protein appears to be one of the most important determining factors. In fact, our other studies don't change the macronutrient ratio but we only alter the ratio between the proteins themselves. So within protein, it's made of a lot of single amino acids. Just by altering the ratio between the amino acids, you're able to get an even bigger response, so there's a lot more to dig through here as far as the details and the mechanisms underlying what we're seeing.

Chin: Yeah, that's incredible. It seems like it can get very complex the more you dig and the more nuanced you look at proteins within proteins. Thank you, Yang. Isa, your lightning presentation is titled “A Step Ahead: PET Scans and Personal Action”. Can you share with us a bit about your presentation?

Hayde: Yeah. Like I said earlier, I have spent a majority of my time in the disclosure project, which is where we take these PET scans. Then we disclose to our participants if they have an elevated or non-elevated level of amyloid. Now we are disclosing this for tau also, but mostly focused on amyloid beta and if that is elevated in a person's brain or not. We have been doing this for a very long time and we started implementing a post-research questionnaire and we have expanded on these questions. They have changed over time, but I was most interested in what people decided to do with these results after this disclosure. We understand what they mean in a clinical setting, but how are people using these? How are they manifesting them into their daily lives? Are people using them? That’s really what I looked at. We found that not only do a majority of people understand these results, they also value knowing them. We saw how these results and how people found personal utility in them changed depending on if they came in with a cognitive impairment diagnosis or not. We also saw how people use these results differently if they received an elevated versus a non-elevated result. It was very interesting to get to hear how people made changes into their daily lives, if people did more future planning or not, if people made appointments with their healthcare providers to discuss their cognitive health—multiple different measurements of personal utility. It was really exciting because we really did find that people not only find these so useful in the clinical setting, but that these results impact people in their decisions far outside of the clinical setting and that they were really a catalyst for meaningful action. It really helped people take a more proactive role in their cognitive health. It was super great findings and super interesting, all from hearing what people had to say about their experience with our research.

Chin: To end, what excites you most about the future of Alzheimer's research, both your own research focuses and careers, as well as the field overall? Yang, let’s start with you. 

Yeh: Nate, so there are two aspects that I'm looking forward to the most. First, just for me personally in my career, I'm looking forward to becoming an independent researcher. For those of you who, I guess, understand this feeling, this is the first step as a researcher where you become independent. You're turning the corner, so to speak, where essentially you become free. As far as the research goes, what I'm really excited is for myself to benefit from the research I'm doing. I'm looking forward to understanding this relationship between what we're eating and the biology itself, and also how that biology transfers its effects into cognition to a point where I can make everyday decisions based on my experiments, based on my results. You're essentially at a point where you're leveraging your every meal to better improve your cognitive health. I find that to be very powerful. At that point, I think it will be something that would benefit everyone as far as this translational angle goes.

Chin: I think everyone listening would agree with you, Yang. We all want to know what foods we should be eating and what we shouldn't be so that we can live the best, healthiest lives possible. Isa, how about you?

Hayde: Yeah, I love the aspect of giving people hope, especially after becoming involved with the New Friends program, getting to talk to people that our research is really impacting every day. Getting to hear the positive outlook that people are now having about their own diagnoses is absolutely great to hear. Yeah I think just the whole aspect of preventative medicine. We are kind of moving in a new direction, I feel like, in the U.S. healthcare-wise, trying to focus on preventative before these issues actually arise. I feel like in the past, we have kind of viewed Alzheimer's and related dementias as more of a stagnant thing. You can’t really beat it. You can’t really do much about it, so getting to kind of have a narrative flip and having people be excited, be hopeful when they get these diagnoses—that is what I am definitely most excited for. It’s a great time to be involved with all of this research that is happening right now and all of the breakthroughs, especially in Wisconsin because of all of the great programs that we have set up. Thank you.

Chin: With that, I'd like to thank you both for being on Dementia Matters, and I look forward to seeing your presentations on ADRD, which is going to be Tuesday, 22nd, 2025. Thank you both.

Outro: Thank you for listening to Dementia Matters. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Or tell your smart speaker to play the Dementia Matters podcast. Please rate us on your favorite podcast app. It helps other people find our show and lets us know how we're doing. If you enjoy our show and want to support our work, consider making a gift to the Dementia Matters Fund through the UW Initiative to End Alzheimer's. All donations go toward outreach and production. Donate at the link in the description. Dementia Matters is brought to you by the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It receives funding from private, university, state and national sources, including a grant from the National Institutes on Aging for Alzheimer's Disease Research. This episode of Dementia Matters was produced and edited by Caoilfhinn Rauwerdink. Our musical jingle is Cases to Rest by Blue Dot Sessions. To learn more about the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, check out our website at adrc.wisc.edu. That's adrc.wisc.edu and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. If you have any questions or comments, email us at Dementia Matters at medicine.wisc.edu. Thanks for listening.