Sid O'Bryant grandmother's plight drives his passion for Alzheimer's research
Dr. Sid O’Bryant (1998 BACH H&SS) is the principal investigator of the Health and Aging Brain Study–Health Disparities (HABS-HD), the most comprehensive study of Alzheimer’s among diverse communities ever conducted.
He’s also the executive director of the Institute for Translational Research at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, which received a five-year grant in 2022. According to O’Bryant, it was the largest Alzheimer’s research grant in history, almost $150 million.
LSU Alumnus Dr. Sid O'Bryant
An LSU Beginning
Dr. O’Bryant grew up in Gonzales, La., considering LSU a place his family went for football games and tailgates. Becoming a student was a whole new experience. He says his time at LSU was highly impactful because it was the first time he was around people who attended college.
“It was just kind of a new world even though it was 20 miles from my hometown,” O’Bryant says.
While attending LSU, O’Bryant worked with several faculty members in their labs to determine his career goals and conducted research studies. He says he was given opportunities and mentorship that changed his path and that he would never have had the drive he does without the time faculty spent with him and the general feel of the LSU community.
A Family Crisis That Sparked a Mission
The course of O’Bryant’s work changed during his graduate work at the University of Albany when his father’s mother got sick. O’Bryant used his LSU connections to get his grandmother to the right people, but it still took up to 15 months for her to get a diagnosis.
This made him notice the lack of accessibility; he says he didn’t come from a wealthy family, so they couldn’t afford to pay up to $1,500 to get a diagnosis. O’Bryant found these accessibility issues problematic and believes the medical field failed his grandma. When his grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, O’Bryant decided this would be his purpose.
A Vision for Global Brain Health
“My personal vision statement is a world of optimal brain health for all, and that’s the vision statement of my institute, and why I’m here,” he says.
O’Bryant aims to scale his work globally and bring cutting-edge standards of care and science research to all walks of life. He wants brain aging and brain disease as heavily discussed as heart disease and cancer since he says brain disease costs more for the medical community than the other two combined.
O’Bryant takes the most pride, believing he and his team have already changed the world of Alzheimer’s. He’s proud of their work building and making them publicly available, sharing almost 500 databases in the last 36 months.
MRI scan from the Healthy and Aging Brain study
Training the Next Generation of Scientists
He has also been mentoring the next generation of scientists to set long-term goals and develop a strategy, which is rewarding. O’Bryant says the grant he received supported more than twenty additional grants, many of which were training grants.
O’Bryant has been a competitive athlete since age six. He participated in martial arts, owned a studio for about 15 years, and power-lifted through graduate school until back surgery for a desiccated disc. After surgery, O’Bryant fell in love with bodybuilding and says he doesn’t compete for trophies but practices because he’s passionate about it. Knowing that diet and exercise are probably the most significant factors in the risk reduction of Alzheimer’s makes him see the importance of living that as an example.
O’Bryant says an important lesson for early-career students and even established scientists is never to quit and to pursue one’s dreams, not funding.
“Find what it is you truly love and what you’re passionate about, and once you do, go,” he says.
Inside the Institute for Translational Research Lab
He says remembering your roots is important because your work should be about helping people, not funding or publications. Approaching his work with this attitude and framework allows him to have a team of friends who love their work. He would rather have an amazing friend than the best colleague any day.
Finally, O’Bryant explains the shock many people display when he informs them he went to LSU, not Harvard, Yale, or Columbia. “The only limit you have is you; LSU is a blessing to you; it’s something that will open doors, and don’t let someone tell you you can’t do something.”