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EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S CORNER
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Announcing the Inaugural William H. Gates Sr. Fellowship from the AD Data Initiative
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An Invitation to Accelerate New Discoveries in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias
The AD Data Initiative was founded on eager optimism – that helping more people gain better access to more data will accelerate advances in Alzheimer’s and related dementias research. The tremendous enthusiasm dedicated to eradicating dementia in the community is the inspiration behind the William H. Gates Sr. Fellowship from the AD Data Initiative, which I am proud to announce today.
On September 14, 2020, William H. Gates Sr. passed away from Alzheimer’s disease. This fellowship recognizes his lifetime commitment to innovation and progress, and honors those whose lives have been touched by neurodegenerative diseases.
There are more than 55 million people around the world living with dementia. This represents an enormous human and economic cost, and these figures are only going to get worse. To curb this trend, we must look at a broad range of approaches to identify novel insights that could, for example, help stratify populations in different ways, uncover new potential targets for interventions, and discover inexpensive, simple biomarkers to support earlier detection and diagnoses.
The data, tools, and resources offered by members of the AD Data Initiative are galvanizing the research community to explore existing human study data in new ways and share their findings and the new hypotheses they generate with the scientific community. The Gates Sr. AD Fellowship aims to encourage and support researchers around the world to be bold, creative, and innovative in their approach to finding new and meaningful diagnostics, treatments, and cures.
The inaugural cohort will explore an array of key questions the field is trying to answer. How can existing and new data be combined to track disease progression and make more accurate prognoses more effectively? What is the best way to identify biological pathways that may be new targets for interventions? Can improved methods to stratify patients better define Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias? Applicants are also encouraged to propose their own questions and ideas.
If you are a neuroscientist, data scientist, engineer, mathematician, or programmer with an innovative data analysis idea or statistical approach that could be performed on existing data from human studies, I invite you to find out about the fellowship. We know it will take a diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and approaches to make the progress we desperately need. I especially encourage people from underrepresented cultures, geographies, and technical expertise to explore this opportunity. Several applicants will be selected to form the first cohort, and will receive a financial award, networking assistance, mentorship opportunities, conference attendance, and more.
Visit this site to learn more about this exciting opportunity and stay tuned for additional details coming on May 11th.
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Sincerely,
Tetsu Maruyama
Executive Director,
Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative
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Learn more about the William H. Gates Sr. Fellowship from the AD Data Initiative.
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PARTNER AND PROJECT SPOTLIGHT
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Dementias Platform UK: Working to Improve Dementia Research
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ADDI has provided Dementias Platform UK (DPUK) £2.2 million for its work in bridging the gaps between discoveries in the lab, trials, and new treatments for dementia.
DPUK is a public-private partnership that brings together expertise from universities, charities, and pharmaceutical and technology companies to enable crucial breakthroughs in dementia research, quickening the translation of these discoveries into viable patient treatments. Based at the University of Oxford, DPUK has key parts of its work centered at the University of Cambridge and Population Data Science at Swansea University, as well as elsewhere in the UK.
DPUK’s Data Portal, hosted at Swansea University, is a world-leading Trusted Research Environment (TRE) available to researchers globally to access data to find new ways of detecting, treating, and preventing dementia. It currently includes more than 60 datasets and the analysis environment to work on the records for over 3.5 million people.
DPUK’s partnership with ADDI includes the “Democratising Dementia Data” (D3) project, which will enable easier access to dementia-relevant data worldwide. Democratizing data is the process of facilitating data access for all researchers, which quickens the pace of research and deepens the capability of their work. On behalf of the dementia research community, ADDI supports rapid access to large multimodal datasets (genomic, imaging, and device data) for scientists, wherever they work in the world.
As part of the partnership, Swansea University has been awarded £1 million to provide the infrastructure and develop an interface for federated data analysis between DPUK and other infrastructures to enable global access to dementia-specific data using the AD Workbench.
“Access to high-quality data is the biggest accelerator of scientific research. This applies especially to complex conditions like dementia. We are delighted to work with ADDI to make research-ready data globally available for dementia research,” says Professor John Gallacher, Director of DPUK.
Watch our social media channels for updates on the D3 project
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NEW DATASETS
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Have you checked out these new datasets now available on the AD Workbench?
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We have more datasets in the pipeline: two RNA-seq datasets from the University of California, San Francisco; the API Generation study from Banner Health; the ADDIA study from Amoneta; and TDP-43 Pathology data from NIA-CARD.
Thanks to all these organizations for your commitment to data sharing! Stay tuned to AD Connect and our social media channels for updates.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
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EPND’s Cohort Catalogue
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The European Platform for Neurodegenerative Diseases (EPND) has launched its Cohort Catalogue. It features an extensive list of international research cohorts across the neurodegenerative disease spectrum. Researchers can use this to discover ongoing studies and search metadata by disease area, biosample availability, imaging and cognitive data, and more.
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The NeuroToolKit (NTK)
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Want to learn more about the NTKApp? Check out the new tutorial videos that were recently posted on AD Connect. There are videos on the NTKCuration App, NTKAnalysis App, and NTKMeta-Analysis App. Have questions? Ask them on our discussion forum.
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Alzheimer Europe Conference
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Early bird registration is now open for the 33rd Alzheimer Europe Conference. This year’s conference will be from October 16-18 in Helsinki, Finland. Interested in submitting an abstract? The call for abstracts will close on April 30.
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RESEARCHERS’ TOOLBOX...IS MOVING
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Looking for technical-focused news and articles? Check out “Inspire Research,” which is ADDI’s new publication. It will take a deep dive into issues of interest to new, existing, and perhaps former AD Workbench users. Join ADDI today to make sure this quarterly publication arrives in your inbox. Our first edition will be coming soon.
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Be the first to get news, updates, and opportunities to engage with our community by following us on Twitter.
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EVENTS
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You may find information about other conferences on AlzForum.
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While there are numerous dementia related publications made available every day, below is a selection that may be of interest to the ADDI community.
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In General
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Data Sharing
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Diagnostics
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Diversity in AD Research
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You may find additional publications on AlzForum or ResearchGate.
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“ASK ALOIS…”
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Who is Alois? In 1906, Dr. Alois Alzheimer noticed changes in the brain tissue of a woman who had died of an unusual mental illness. This was the first identification of Alzheimer’s disease.
We use Dr. Alzheimer (Alois in this case) as our inspiration to wrap up our newsletter – to answer a question about Alzheimer’s disease, related dementias, data sharing, or the world at large. Maybe you can use this to stump your colleagues or friends?
Alois, what can Britney Spears and Johnny Carson reveal about Alzheimer’s disease?
Several years ago, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that one way to identify those most at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease is to ask them whether they recognize celebrities such as Britney Spears and Johnny Carson (for younger readers, yes, they are celebrities). When someone at the highest risk of Alzheimer's tries to recognize a famous person, their brain activates in a very different way from someone who is not at risk. Since this report, other studies have found similar results.
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Are you following ADDI on Twitter and LinkedIn? Be the first to get news, updates, and opportunities to engage with our community by following us on @AlzData and AlzheimersData.
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