Three researchers from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, the Los Angeles-based Keck School of Medicine of USC, and two Harvard-affiliated hospitals were awarded up to $70 million from the National Institutes of Health to establish improved infrastructure for advancing Alzheimer's research.
With the five-year grant, the consortium hopes to build an initial network of 35 Alzheimer's disease trial sites at universities across the U.S. The new infrastructure will implement more efficient methods to recruit participants for clinical trials and provide more convenient locations for these patients. The three researchers will collaborate by sharing data, instruments, software and biologic samples.
"Scientists have made great strides in understanding Alzheimer's disease, and technological advances have placed us on the verge of a breakthrough. This collaboration will remove some of the barriers that have hamstrung researchers from timely completion of clinical trials in Alzheimer's disease and other dementias," said Paul Aisen, a principle investigator of the NIH grant and director of the USC Alzheimer's Therapeutic Research Institute.