NIH-led partnership launches new data-sharing portal for Alzheimer’s drug discovery

Developed by Seattle-based non-profit organization Sage Bionetworks and part of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP), the AMP-AD Knowledge Portal will help in sharing and analysis of large and complex biomedical datasets.

The AMP bringing together NIH, the US Food and Drug Administration, industry and academic scientists from different disciplines to translate knowledge faster and more successfully into new therapies.

Researchers believe that this will help in developing predictive models of the disease and enable the selection of novel targets that drive the changes in molecular networks.

NIH director Francis Collins said: "We are determined to reduce the cost and time it takes to discover viable therapeutic targets and bring new diagnostics and effective therapies to people with Alzheimer’s. That demands a new way of doing business.

"The AD initiative of AMP is one way we can revolutionize Alzheimer’s research and drug development by applying the principles of open science to the use and analysis of large and complex human data."

Academic teams from institutes including Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Boston, University of Florida and Emory University contributed to the data.

The different academic teams will work together to apply analytical approaches to integrate molecular and clinical data from over 2,000 postmortem brain samples.

None of the publications on the portal will be embargoed.