Building bridges.

UCLA last week played host to 13 of China's top neurologists and psychiatrists who were here to learn how to establish Alzheimer's disease research centers in their own communities.

The three-day trip, paid for by Japanese drug maker Eisai Pharmaceuticals Inc., immersed the visiting scientists in U.S.-style research site management and techniques in conducting clinical trials, patient assessments, imaging technology, and quality assurance. The visitors also got a taste of some Hollywood-style hospitality, courtesy of a significant university benefactor.

UCLA's Dr. Jeffrey Cummings, one of the nation's top neurology researchers, had earlier in the day shown off facilities at the Deane F. Johnson Center for Neurotherapeutics, the neurological research institute he heads.

The center was endowed by Kate Edelman Johnson, who formed the Deane F. Johnson Alzheimer's Research Foundation after the 1999 death of the entertainment industry attorney and executive. She invited the group to dinner at her Beverly Hills home overlooking the UCLA campus, repaying the doctors for hospitality she was shown during a foundation-related trip to China last year.

Johnson said one of her dreams is for the center to focus on clinical trials leading to cures. "Deane was such a vibrant, active renaissance man." she said, noting her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's seven years before his death at age 81. "To watch him lose himself was heartbreaking."

The center specializes in conducting clinical trials for novel therapies for diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's disease. Most the studies are funded by the National Institutes for Health, but Cummings does have a few drug industry contracts, including a Novartis AG study of a patch-administered drug that could alleviate the deterioration in cognitive abilities that can accompany Parkinson's.

"I think we've established ourselves as a great research institution in only a short amount of time," said Johnson, noting that one strength is the close professional partnership she's developed with Cummings, who treated her husband in his final years. "I dream it; he makes it happen."

Center staff workers are now talking with a number of potential corporate sponsors, looking for ongoing annual gift that would help fund $125,000 in staff costs.

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at [phone], ext. 232, or at [e-mail].