The Bio-Hermes-001 Dataset: Blood and Digital Biomarker Data for Alzheimer's Research
The Bio-Hermes-001 dataset compares blood-based and digital biomarkers including digital cognitive and voice assessments, with the results of brain amyloid PET scans and traditional cognitive tests. The dataset is provided by the Global Alzheimer's Platform (GAP) Bio-Hermes-001 study. The Bio-Hermes-001 dataset is expected to inform future clinical practice and clinical trial designs for new disease-modifying therapies.
What the Dataset Contains
The dataset contains:
- 80,000 test results from the Bio-Hermes-001 study
- 1,000+ participants enrolled from 1,296 screened across 17 community-based research sites in the United States from April 2021 to November 2022
- Three clinical cohorts: cognitively normal (400+), mild cognitive impairment (300+), and mild Alzheimer's disease (270+)
- 24% of participants from traditionally underrepresented, surpassing the diversity rate of other clinical trials
- Blood biomarkers include Aβ40, Aβ42, Aβ42/Aβ40, total tau, p-tau181, and p-tau217 (among others), paired with digital cognitive, speech, and retinal test results and PET- or CSF-confirmed amyloid status
Biomarkers for Accessible Diagnostics
Currently, many health systems require use of expensive PET scans or CSF-based biomarkers to determine if there is amyloid in the brain prior to prescribing disease modifying treatments. PET scans are not typically covered by insurance and are limited to the facilities and cities that can receive active FDA-approved radiotracers.
Blood and digital biomarker tests in the Bio-Hermes-001 study are comparatively simple, less costly, and accessible for neighborhood and sophisticated health systems alike.
By providing comparisons of data available from standard Alzheimer’s diagnostic tests, Bio-Hermes works to reduce barriers to access to timely diagnosis and care.
The Bio-Hermes-001 Study and Data Challenge
The nonprofit Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation (GAP) and its network of clinical research sites throughout the U.S. (GAP-Net) led the study. The dataset has been used for the Bio-Hermes Biomarker Data Challenge.
What Researchers Can Do With This Dataset
Researchers can use the Bio-Hermes-001 dataset to evaluate how blood-based and digital biomarkers perform against PET-confirmed amyloid status across demographics and clinical stage, and to identify test combinations that could reduce reliance on costly PET and CSF screening in Alzheimer's disease trials. The dataset supports work in diagnostic algorithm development, biomarker cross-validation, and health equity in Alzheimer's screening pathways.
How to Access The Dataset
The dataset is available through the AD DISCOVERY PORTAL ↗ and accessible within individually permissioned AD Workbench workspaces at no cost to qualified researchers. AD Workbench provides free compute, virtual machines, and multimodal analysis tools and allows researchers to bring their own code, models, and approved external datasets into their workspace.