The US National Institute on Aging (NIA) is funding a six-year, up to $300 million project to build a massive Alzheimer’s research database that can track the health of Americans for decades and give researchers new insights into the brain-wasting disease. . Reuters reports. The NIA, part of the government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), aims to create a data platform that can provide long-term health information for 70% to 90% of the US population, officials told Reuters of the grant. which did not receive. previously reported. They noted that the platform will use data from medical records, insurance claims, pharmacies, mobile devices, sensors and various government agencies.
Tracking patients before and after they develop Alzheimer’s symptoms is an integral part of progress against the disease, which can begin up to 20 years before memory problems develop. The database could help identify healthy people at risk for Alzheimer’s, which affects about 6 million Americans, for future drug trials. It also aims to address the chronic underrepresentation of people of color and diverse ethnicities in Alzheimer’s clinical trials and could help increase enrollment outside urban academic medical centers.
Once built, the platform could also track patients after they receive a treatment like Leqembi, which received accelerated US approval in January and is expected to receive traditional FDA approval by July 6. The US Medicare health plan for the elderly will likely require one. tracking in the registry as a condition of Leqembi’s compensation. [T]he data platform can also help researchers working in other disease areas understand which patients are most at risk and the effects of drugs. The grant, posted on March 13, has been years in the making. The funding announcement sets its earliest start date as April 2024, with a goal of establishing an Alzheimer’s registry 21 months later.