On Mar. 2, 2021, the NIH announced it had launched the next version of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) Alzheimer’s disease program to expand the open science, big data approach for identifying biological targets for therapeutic intervention.

AMP AD 2.0 supported new technologies, including cutting-edge, single-cell profiling and computational modeling, to enable a precision medicine approach to therapy development.

Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia, affects an estimated 5.8 million Americans 65 and older. Because the prevalence of this disease is greater among Black and Latino Americans than among white Americans, AMP AD 2.0 will expand the molecular characterization of Alzheimer’s in brain, blood and spinal fluid samples collected in these diverse populations.

These datasets will allow the AMP AD 2.0 research teams to refine the characterization of new targets, discover new fluid biomarkers, define disease subtypes and increase the understanding of causative factors and steps in disease progression.

The knowledge gained will inform the development of therapies that can be tailored to different stages of the disease and diverse disease risk profiles.