To tackle the human health challenges that face the world today, the FNIH develops collaborations with top experts from government, industry, academia and the not-for-profit sector and provides a neutral environment where we can work productively toward a common goal.
The study was implemented using shared and harmonized protocols across the eight sites to gather an enormous amount of data (physical, cognitive assessments, diet, illness and enteric infection, socio-economic status, etc.) to enable identification and characterization of factors associated with negative impacts on a child’s growth, development and vaccine response early in life.
The Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), is a landmark study that has profoundly influenced our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease by identifying the earliest changes in brain structure and function that signal its onset and progression.
The Global Health Fund supports FNIH programs that are designed to alleviate widespread suffering in the developing world. Program focus includes research and training on diseases such as malaria and HIV, as well as conditions like malnutrition that afflict hundreds of millions of people globally.
ADNI was established to facilitate the development of effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease by validating biomarkers for clinical trials and determining the relationships between the clinical, cognitive, imaging, genetic, and biochemical biomarker characteristics of AD.
This project will aim to standardize and validate measurement methods for inflammatory markers associated with Alzheimer’s Disease and/or Major Depressive Disorder to ultimately identify a unique biosignature of disease. The identified biosignature would greatly assist with medication development, patient diagnosing, and patient selection for clinical trials.
The Biomarkers Consortium’s Targeted Plasma-Based Biomarkers in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), completed in July 2012, was the first part of a multi-phased effort utilizing samples from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) to validate multiplex panels in both plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), to diagnose patients with AD and to monitor disease progression.
The AD Targeted Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Proteomics Project, completed in Q2Y15, completed an initial validation of a multiplexed panel of known biomarkers, examined BACE levels and enzymatic activity, and set up the initial validation of a mass spectroscopy panel using AD cerebrospinal fluid samples from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI).
whorton@fnih.orgThe Biomarkers Consortium’s PET Radioligand Project, completed in December 2012, developed improved, more sensitive PET radioligands with higher binding to the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor. Findings from this study suggest that the [11C]PBR38 ligand, in particular, may be useful in detecting progression from mild cognitive impairment or treatment response in Alzheimer’s Disease.
The Biomarkers Consortium’s Placebo Data Analysis Project in Alzheimer’s Disease/Mild Cognitive Impairment Clinical Trials combined placebo data from large clinical trials provided by multiple pharmaceutical companies to create datasets of 3,000 to 5,000 subjects for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) groups. The goal of the project was to develop better measures of disease progression in terms of outcome measures that have both low variability and are sensitive to change, for use in future clinical trials.
The Biomarkers Consortium’s Longitudinal CSF Proteomics Project, completed in Q4Y20, was the third stage of a multi-phased effort utilizing samples from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) expanding on the identification of promising proteins in a previous Biomarkers Consortium project to provide early validation for candidate AD biomarkers. Concentrations of the candidate biomarkers in CSF were measured using a state-of-the-art targeted stable isotope-based quantitative mass spectrometry assay developed and implemented during the first two program stages.