This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Recently launched program identifies volunteers for Alzheimer's disease research

Banner Alzheimer’s Institute recently announced the launch of GeneMatch, a program that identifies individuals interested in volunteering for Alzheimer’s research studies, partly based on their APOE genetic information.

“GeneMatch is a novel program created to help accelerate enrollment in Alzheimer’s-related research by matching people based on their APOE genotype,” Jessica Langbaum, PhD, principal scientist at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and principal investigator of GeneMatch, said in a press release. “The new program will advance the study of people at different levels [of] genetic risk for Alzheimer’s and help find effective treatments to prevent this devastating disease as soon as possible.”

The program, created in 2012 under the Alzheimer’s Prevention Registry and Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative, will enroll individuals aged 55 to 75 years interested in participating in Alzheimer’s disease-related studies who have not been diagnosed with dementia or cognitive impairment.

The first research study to use GeneMatch is the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative APOE4 trial, which will evaluate efficacy of two drugs to lower amyloid proteins in the brain in an effort to prevent or delay Alzheimer’s disease symptom emergence in high-risk individuals. The study is sponsored by Novartis, Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and the National Institute on Aging.

GeneMatch will begin in the United States, though there are plans to expand internationally, according to the release.

“Research studies in healthy people at different levels of genetic risk for Alzheimer’s promise to further clarify the earliest biological changes associated with the disease, clarify what genetic risk disclosure means to people in the new era of Alzheimer’s prevention trials and find effective treatments to end Alzheimer's as quickly as possible,” Eric Reiman, MD, executive director at Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and codirector of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative, said in the release. “GeneMatch is intended to provide an unprecedented resource of genetically characterized research volunteers to do just that.”