$300M research fund will focus on Alzheimer’s

The National Institutes on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, is launching a $300 million research fund focused on Alzheimer’s disease.

The research fund aims to track the health of Americans for decades, with the intent of housing the long-term health information of 70% to 90% of the population. The news was first reported by Reuters.

NIA will fund the project, with the platform using data from medical records, insurance claims, pharmacies, mobile devices, sensors and various government agencies. By tracking health data, researchers are hopeful to make advancements in Alzheimer’s with the health information of patients before and after they are diagnosed. For example, Alzheimer’s symptoms can be seen up to 20 years before memory issues arise.

Ideally, the database will help identify healthy people at risk for Alzheimer’s, which impacts six million Americans. These identified people could be eligible for drug trials.

"Real-world data is what we need to make a lot of decisions about the effectiveness of medications and looking really at a much broader population than most clinical trials can cover," Nina Silverberg, PhD, director of the NIA's Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers program, told Reuters.

The fund comes at a time when research around Alzheimer’s disease has renewed hope with the development of Leqembi, a new treatment from Eisai and Biogen that slows the advancement of the disease in early-stage patients.

See the full story below: