NIA-AA Symposium
The 2018 NIA-AA symposium focused on enabling precision medicine for Alzheimer's Disease through Open Science.
The 2018 NIA-AA Symposium:
Enabling Precision Medicine for Alzheimer’s through Open Science
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Alzheimer’s Association convened a pre-AAIC conference symposium (July 19-20, Chicago) featuring an array of new research and translational infrastructure programs that operate under open-science principles to generate new mechanistic insights of disease and resilience, discover novel targets and biomarkers and develop data and research tools for precision medicine research.
These programs were a result of the intense strategic planning and program development activities at the NIA carried out in collaboration with a multi-stakeholder community brought together by the NIH AD Research Summits (2012, 2015 and 2018) and made possible through the increased NIH funding for Alzheimer’s research.
Over a day and half, over 250 symposium attendees heard the latest from the teams participating in the Accelerated Medicines Partnership for AD (AMP-AD) Target Discovery and Preclinical Validation program and the affiliated programs: M2OVE-AD, Resilience – AD, MODEL-AD and AlzPED. The symposium ended with highlights from the first set of grant awardees from NIA’s Translational Bioinformatics for Drug Repositioning and Combination Therapy program.
The symposium also celebrated the launch of the Agora platform. Supported by the NIA and developed by Sage Bionetworks in collaboration with members of the AMP-AD academic and private partners (industry teams and the Alzheimer’s Association), Agora is an interactive, web-based tool designed to allow researchers at large to visually explore curated genomic analyses including AMP-AD candidate target nominations. The launch of the beta version featured over 100 early target nominations derived from unbiased computational analyses of genomic, proteomic and metabolomic data generated from brain and plasma samples collected from multiple longitudinal cohorts and several AD Research Centers’ brain banks.
For more details about the individual session and links to each presentation, please see below.
July 19
Session One: AMP-AD Target Discovery Program: Enabling New Disease Insights and Novel Target and Biomarker Discovery through Open Science- Comparative Transcriptomics for Generating New Disease Insights and Novel Target Discovery (Nilufer Ertekin-Taner, Mayo Clinic)
- Integrative Proteomics for Novel Target and Biomarker Discovery (Allan Levey, Emory University)
- Integrative Metabolomics for Target Discovery and Disease Sub-classification (Matthias Arnold, Institute for Systems Biology at Helmholtz Center)
- Discovery and Validation of Novel Targets underlying Cognitive Decline in AD – from Cohorts to Single Cell Profiling (Vilas Menon, Columbia University)
- Integrative Biology Approach to Complexity of Alzheimer's Disease and Novel Target Discovery and Validation (Noam Beckmann, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
- Using iPSCs to Interrogate the Heterogeneity of AD and to Develop Synaptic Activity-Based Assays for Experimental Validation of Novel Targets (Tracy Young-Pearse, Harvard Medical School and BWH)
- Insights into the Role of Viral Network Biology in AD (Ben Readhead, Arizona State University)
- Leveraging AMP-AD Brain Transcriptome Modules as Endophenotypes for Cross-Validation of Human Targets and Mouse AD Models (Josh Shulman, Baylor College of Medicine)
- Computational Tools for Qualifying Candidate Targets (Cory Funk, Institute for Systems Biology)
- Identification of Disease Insights Through Consortium-Wide Meta-Analyses (Ben Logsdon, Sage Bionetworks)
- Open Source Tools for De-risking AMP-AD Candidate Targets: Wall of Targets (Lara Mangravite, Sage Bionetworks)
July 20
Session Three: Decoding the Molecular Ties Between Metabolic and Vascular Risk and AD Pathogenesis: M2OVE-AD Consortium- Interdisciplinary Research to Understand the Interplay of Diabetes, Cerebrovascular Disease and Alzheimer’s disease (Jose Luschinger, Columbia University)
- Understanding the Integrative Physiology of the Renin-Angiotensin-Endothelial Pathway in AD (Ihab Hajjar, Emory University)
- Molecular Characterization and Validation of Sex-Differences in Alzheimer’s Disease Pathogenesis (Dongming Cai, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
- Integrative Translational Discovery of Vascular Risk Factors in Aging and Dementia (Guojun Bu, Mayo Clinic)
- Systems Genetics Analysis of Resilience to Alzheimer’s Disease (Catherine Kaczorowski, Jackson Labs)
- Identifying the Molecular Systems, Brain Networks, and Key Molecules Underlying Cognitive resilience (Chris Gaiteri, Rush University)
- Resilience to Alzheimer’s Disease in Humans with Exceptional Longevity (Sofiya Milman, Albert Einstein College of Medicine)
- Molecular Networks Underlying Resilience to Alzheimer’s Disease in APOE E4 Carriers (Morgan Levine, Yale University)
- Integrative Network Modeling of Cognitive Resilience to Alzheimer’s Disease (Bin Zhang, Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
- Translational Infrastructure for Next-Gen Animal Models Development and Rigorous Preclinical Efficacy Testing – Overview of MODEL-AD Capabilities (Bruce Lamb, Indiana University and Frank LaFerla, UC Irvine)
- Bioinformatics Approaches for Aligning the Molecular Etiology of AD Across Humans and Mouse Models (Greg Carter, Jackson Labs and Ali Mortazavi, UC Irvine)
- Evaluating the Translational Validity of Transgenic Mouse Models through Deep Phenotyping (Gareth Howell, Jackson Labs and Grant McGregor, UC Irvine)
- MODEL-AD Preclinical Efficacy Testing Pipeline and Training Resources (Stacey Rizzo, Jackson Labs)
- AlzPED – Increasing Transparent Reporting and Rigorous Study Design of Preclinical Efficacy Testing Studies (Lorenzo Refolo and Suzana Petanceska, NIA)
- Harnessing Diverse Bioinformatic Approaches to Repurpose Drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease (Mark Albers, Harvard University)
- ApoE Genotype-Directed Drug Repositioning and Combination Therapy for Alzheimer’s Disease (Ali Taubes, Gladstone Institutes, UCSF)
- An Integrated Reverse Engineering Approach toward Rapid Drug Repositioning for Alzheimer’s Disease (Rong Xu, Case Western Reserve, University)
- Drug Repurposing Targeting Immune Activation Networks in Alzheimer's Disease (Joel Dudley, Icahn Institute at Mount Sinai)