Research Focus

Dr. Howard Chertkow is a remarkably distinguished cognitive neurologist whose contributions are admired across the world. Dr. Chertkow joins Baycrest and the University of Toronto from Montreal’s McGill University, where he served as Director of the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) and McGill University Bloomfield Centre for Research in Aging and was a Senior Investigator in the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. In his practice at the JGH, Dr. Chertkow diagnosed and treated patients with early stage Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, and helped found and direct Canada’s largest memory clinic. Dr. Chertkow will direct the new Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness, a research, education and clinical interdisciplinary program to develop and evaluate the most promising approaches to preventing cognitive decline. As its inaugural Director, Dr. Chertkow will assemble a state-of-the-art Clinical Trials Unit and further develop Baycrest’s translational research program in dementia to test the latest emerging therapies for Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions. He will also serve as a Clinical Advisor to the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), the largest venture of its kind in the global seniors’ care sector. He is an exceptionally prolific researcher in the area of dementia, serving since 2014 as Scientific Director of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), which has brought together 400 leading dementia researchers in Canada.  Dr. Chertkow is an elected member of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. His areas of research interest include: early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and prediction of deterioration in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI); the structure, organization, and function of the semantic memory component of long term memory, and its deterioration in dementia; localization of language and memory functions in the brain using functional imaging; and therapy of cognitive disorders in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia using neuromodulation approaches.

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• Anderson ND, D’Amico D, Rotenberg S, Addis DR, Gillen J, Moore D, Furlano JA, Tan B, Binns M, Santarossa M, Chertkow H, for the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) CAN-THUMBS UP Study Group. (2024). Validation of a community-based approach toward personalized dementia risk reduction: The Kimel Family Centre for Brain Health and Wellness. The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, 11, 1455-1466.
• Feldman HH, Belleville S, Nygaard HB, Montero-Odasso M, Durant J, Lupo J-L, Revta C, Chan S, Cuesta M, Slack PJ, Winer S, Brewster PWH, Hofer SM, Lim A, Centen A, Jacobs DM, Anderson ND, Walker JD, Speechley MR, Zou GY, Chertkow H, for the Canadian Consortium for Neurogeneration in Aging (CCNA) CAN-THUMBS UP Study Group. (2023). Protocol for the Brain Health Support Program study of the Canadian Therapeutic Platform Trial for Multidomain Interventions to prevent dementia: (CAN-THUMBS UP): A prospective 12-month intervention study. The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, 4, 875-885.
• Rahayel S, Bocti C, Sévigny Dupont P, Joannette M, Lavallée MM, Nikelski J, Chertkow H, Joubert S. (2019). Subcortical amyloid load is associated with shape and volume in cognitively normal individuals.. Human brain mapping
• Pekeles H, Qureshi HY, Paudel HK, Schipper HM, Gornistky M, Chertkow H. (2019). Development and validation of a salivary tau biomarker in Alzheimer's disease.. Alzheimer's & dementia (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 11, 53-60.

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