Michael Donohue, PhD

Professor of Neurology

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Overview

Michael Donohue, PhD is an Associate Professor of Neurology, Associate Director of Biostatistics at the Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI), and Co-Lead of the Biostatistics Unit of the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trial Consortium (ACTC).

Since obtaining his PhD in Mathematics in 2005, Dr. Donohue has worked on Alzheimer’s clinical trials and observational studies, such as the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). His primary area of interest is applying novel statistical methods to data from ADNI to better understand the multivariate course of markers of Alzheimer’s progression, and design innovative clinical trials to prevent or slow the progression of disease. He has studied the risk of cognitive decline associated with elevated brain amyloid in cognitively normal individuals; and helped design the first intervention in asymptomatic Alzheimer’s, the Anti-Amyloid Treatment for Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s (the A4 Study; in collaboration with Eli Lilly), and its primary outcome measure, the Preclinical Alzheimer Cognitive Composite. He has been awarded grants to develop innovative statistical approaches for Alzheimer’s from the National Institute on Aging; the Alzheimer’s Association, Michael J. Fox Foundation, and W. Garfield Weston Foundation; and the Clinical and Translation Research Institute of University of California, San Diego

Education and Training

  • University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA — PhD — 05/2005 — Mathematics

Research Funding

  • Building predictive algorithms to identify resilience and resistance to Alzheimer's disease
    NIH · R01AG079142 · Jun 1, 2023 – Feb 29, 2028 · Role: Co-Principal Investigator
  • Estimating Long-Term Disease Trajectories from Short-Term Data
    NIH · R01AG049750 · Feb 1, 2016 – Jan 31, 2021 · Role: Principal Investigator

Publications

  • The prognostic value of blood-based p-tau217 levels on progression to clinical impairment. medRxiv. 2026 Feb 09.. View in PubMed
  • Alzheimer’s clinical research data via R packages: The alzverse. Alzheimers Dement. 2026 Feb; 22(2):e71152.. View in PubMed
  • Whole blood gene expression moderates associations between AD biomarkers and cognitive decline in cognitively unimpaired older adults. Alzheimers Dement. 2026 Feb; 22(2):e71225.. View in PubMed
  • Elevated temporal tau PET predicts faster cognitive decline in women than men: A meta-analysis. Alzheimers Dement. 2026 Feb; 22(2):e71031.. View in PubMed
  • Potential role of MRI to optimize clinical trial design for progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration. J Prev Alzheimers Dis. 2026 Mar; 13(3):100486.. View in PubMed
  • Divergent patterns of cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease: implications for secondary prevention trials. medRxiv. 2026 Jan 21.. View in PubMed
  • Blood-based Transcriptomics Reveal Sex- and Amyloid-Modulated Biology of Plasma pTau217 in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease. bioRxiv. 2025 Nov 24.. View in PubMed
  • The Consortium for Clarity in ADRD Research Through Imaging (CLARiTI): Overview of consortium sites and anticipated enrollment. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 11; 21(11):e70880.. View in PubMed
  • Recruitment and retention in a preclinical AD trial: comparisons between academic and non-academic sites. Alzheimers Res Ther. 2025 10 14; 17(1):222.. View in PubMed
  • Independent effects of white matter lesion volume and APOE ɛ4 on ARIA-H in A4 Study. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 10; 21(10):e70751.. View in PubMed