NIH Summit Delivers Recommendations to Accelerate Therapy Development for Alzheimer's Disease

At the recent Alzheimer's Disease Research Summit 2018: Path to Treatment and Prevention, government, academia, industry, and nonprofit experts presented recommendations providing guidance for an integrated, multidisciplinary research agenda to inform priorities for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, reports the U.S. National Institutes of Health . Participants stressed a precision medicine approach to Alzheimer's treatment and prevention. "We must continue to foster creative approaches that leverage emerging scientific and technological advances, establish robust translational infrastructure for rapid and broad sharing of data and research tools, and work with funding partners and other stakeholders to cultivate and sustain an open science research ecosystem," said National Institute on Aging Director Richard J. Hodes. The recommendations centered around topics that included developing a better understanding of the causes of disease; enabling research for developing interventions that can address the underlying disease process and symptoms, and be customized to a person's unique disease risk profile for Alzheimer's; augmenting the research infrastructure and developing translational tools to accelerate therapy development; supporting development of novel therapeutics that target the many aspects of Alzheimer's; understanding the impact of the environment and its interaction with genetic and biological factors to advance effective prevention strategies for Alzheimer's; exploiting emerging digital technologies and big data approaches to improve the ability to discover early markers of disease, better track responsiveness to treatment, and provide improved care; and convening multiple stakeholders to build a new research ecosystem based on open-science precepts.