The Biomarkers Consortium Announces Availability of Alzheimer's Disease Plasma Proteomics Data

A new project represents the work of a consortium venture that involves the use of targeted multiplex proteomic strategies to identify plasma-based biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease.

The Foundation for the US National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Biomarkers Consortium (Bethesda, MD, USA) announced that the results of a proteomics study performed utilizing plasma samples from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI; Los Angeles, CA, USA) are ready to be shared with scientists worldwide for further analysis.

This project is intended to be the first part of a multiphased effort seeking to utilize samples collected by ADNI to qualify multiplex panels in both plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to diagnose patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and monitor disease progression. This information is available to the scientific community for download and further analysis via the ADNI website; more specific information about this data is available online (please see related links below).

"We are pleased to announce the release of this data, which represents a critical step towards the completion of this project,” remarked Scott E. Campbell, PhD, executive director and CEO of the Foundation for NIH.

This Biomarkers Consortium project utilized plasma samples collected by ADNI, a US$60 million project launched in 2004 which concludes by the end of 2010, which is a public-private partnership supported primarily by the NIH with pharmaceutical, imaging and clinical trial management companies; not-for-profit organizations; and donations from individuals providing support through the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH).

One of the largest scale neuroimaging projects ever undertaken, ADNI involves longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging and blood, urine, and spinal fluid biomarker studies of more than 800 individuals, half of whom have mild cognitive impairment, a condition placing them at high risk for developing AD or another dementia. A renewal of the ADNI effort was announced in October 2010 by the Foundation for NIH and National Institute on Aging, which will continue ADNI for an additional five years through late 2015.

A Biomarkers Consortium-convened project team comprised of representatives from academia, industry, and government developed and executed this project and developed a statistical analysis plan, which is now being executed with the public release of these data. Holly Soares, PhD, director of clinical neuroscience biomarkers at Bristol-Myers Squibb (New York, NY, USA), who led the Biomarkers Consortium Project Team, said, "It was gratifying to work collaboratively with industry, academic, and government colleagues to generate a body of data that will tell us more about the biochemical makeup of Alzheimer's disease. Hopefully, the data may someday lead to a blood-based screening test for early diagnosis and preventative treatment of this devastating disease.”

John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, who, with Dr. Leslie M. Shaw co-directs the ADNI Biomarker Core at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, USA), said "This is another example of the efforts of ADNI and all ADNI stakeholders to make potentially valuable chemical biomarker data sets as broadly available to all scientists interested in Alzheimer biomarkers to accelerate the pace of biomarker discovery and validation for Alzheimer patients since this will have an important impact on the discovery and testing of disease modifying therapies for Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Trojanowski is the director of the Penn Institute on Aging and the NIA-funded Alzheimer's Disease Core Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Established by the United States Congress to support the mission of the NIH--improving health through scientific discovery in the search for cures--the Foundation for NIH is a leader in identifying and addressing complex scientific and health issues.

The Biomarkers Consortium is a public-private biomedical research partnership managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) that endeavors to develop, validate, and/or qualify biologic markers (biomarkers) to speed the development of medicines and therapies for detection, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and improve patient care.

Related Links:
The Foundation for the US National Institutes of Health's Biomarkers Consortium
Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative
ADNI Data