Ann-Charlotte Granholm
Neuroscientist of aging who has studied Down syndrome and the Alzheimer's disease that often comes with it since the 1990s, now a professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Professor, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus · founding Executive Director, Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging, University of Denver (from 2015) · Director, Center on Aging, Medical University of South Carolina (14 years) · guest professor in neurosciences, Karolinska Institutet
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (Aurora, Colorado, USA) ↗
People with Down syndrome carry three copies of chromosome 21, which includes the gene for amyloid precursor protein, and Alzheimer's disease brain changes are common as they age. The 2026 study led by Abigail Nordbeck, with Ann-Charlotte Granholm as senior author, looked at post-mortem hippocampus, the brain's memory hub, from people with Down syndrome and Alzheimer's neuropathology. Using spatial transcriptomics, which reads gene activity while keeping track of where in the tissue it happens, and localized proteomics, the team found that mTOR pathway signalling was altered in particular hippocampal subfields, while insulin signalling was altered mainly in the dentate granule neurons.
The point is that the changes were not uniform across the tissue. Different cell layers showed different disturbances in the two growth and nutrient pathways. The authors call these preliminary observations from a small set of human brains; they describe associations, not causes.
Granholm holds both a dental degree (DDS) and a PhD and has held NIH R01 funding for Down syndrome research since 1994. At the Medical University of South Carolina she directed the Center on Aging for 14 years and the brain bank. In 2015 she moved to the University of Denver as founding executive director of the Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging, and she holds a guest professorship in neurosciences at the Karolinska Institutet. The group studies healthy aging and age-related neurodegeneration, especially Down syndrome-related Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, using biomarkers, neuropathology and animal models. Granholm is now a professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and part of the Down Syndrome Biobank Consortium run from its Department of Neurosurgery; publications also appear under the names Ann-Charlotte Granholm-Bentley and Lotta Granholm.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | M | Disruption of hippocampal upstream regulators of mTOR and insulin pathways in Down syndrome with Alzheimer's disease neuropathology: Preliminary observations NOR2026 Senior author: led the spatial study of human post-mortem hippocampus showing subfield-specific mTOR and cell-type-specific insulin pathway changes in Down syndrome with Alzheimer's neuropathology. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 2
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Ann-Charlotte Granholm.
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- Abigail Nordbeck Neuroscience researcher and first author of a 2026 spatial study of the human hippocampus in Down syndrome with Alzheimer's disease, which found mTOR and insulin signalling disturbed in specific cell layers
- Beatrix M. Ueberheide Mass spectrometry and proteomics specialist who directs NYU's proteomics core and contributed the protein profiling to the Down syndrome hippocampus mTOR study.
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