NIH launches Alzheimer’s Big Data portal for research community

The NIH launched a new data-sharing portal for the Alzheimer’s research this week, according to a press release.

The Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP)-Alzheimer’s disease Knowledge Portal is a collaborative effort of the NIH, FDA, industry and academic scientists.

Francis S. Collins

“We are determined to reduce the cost and time it takes to discover viable therapeutic targets and bring new diagnostics and effective therapies to people with Alzheimer’s. That demands a new way of doing business,” Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, said in a press release. “The [Alzheimer’s disease] initiative of AMP is one way we can revolutionize Alzheimer’s research and drug development by applying the principles of open science to the use and analysis of large and complex human data sets.”

The portal will enable the research community to access molecular and clinical data to study the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

“The enormous complexity of the human brain and the processes involved in development and progression of Alzheimer’s disease have been major barriers to drug development,” Richard J. Hodes, MD, the director of the National Institutes of Aging, said in a press release. “Now that we are gathering the data and developing the tools needed to tackle this complexity, it is key to make them widely accessible to the research community so we can speed up the development of critically needed therapies.”

The publication of data to the portal will increase transparency, reproducibility and ease of translation, according to the press release.

“The era of Big Data and open science can be a game-changer in our ability to choose therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s that may lead to effective therapies tailored to diverse patients,” Suzana Petanceska, PhD, program director of the NIA, said in the release. “Simply stated, we can work more effectively together than separately.”