The Accelerating Medicines Partnership Alzheimer's Disease (AMP-AD) is a precompetitive consortium that brings together academic researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and patient advocacy organizations to identify and validate novel therapeutic targets for [Alzheimer's Disease](/diseases/alzheimers-disease). The partnership generates and shares large-scale multi-omics data to accelerate drug discovery.
Background
Partnership Structure
AMP-AD was launched by the NIH in 2014 as part of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) initiative:[@amp2024]
The Accelerating Medicines Partnership Alzheimer's Disease (AMP-AD) is a precompetitive consortium that brings together academic researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and patient advocacy organizations to identify and validate novel therapeutic targets for [Alzheimer's Disease](/diseases/alzheimers-disease). The partnership generates and shares large-scale multi-omics data to accelerate drug discovery.
Background
Partnership Structure
AMP-AD was launched by the NIH in 2014 as part of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP) initiative:[@amp2024]
Academic partners: Major research universities
Pharmaceutical companies: Eli Lilly, Genentech, AstraZeneca, others
Patient organizations: Alzheimer's Association
NIH: NIA, NINDS
Goals
The consortium aims to:[@gauth2018]
Identify novel drug targets
Validate existing targets
Develop biomarkers
De-risk clinical trials
Key Datasets
Transcriptomics
RNA-seq from multiple brain regions:[@swarup2017]
Prefrontal cortex
Temporal cortex
Hippocampus
Dorsolateral striatum
Cerebellum
Proteomics
Mass spectrometry-based proteomics:
Quantitation of thousands of proteins
Phosphoproteomics
Acetylomics
Metabolomics
Metabolite profiling:
Brain tissue metabolomics
CSF metabolomics
Plasma metabolomics
Genomics
Integration with:
GWAS summary statistics
Whole exome sequencing
Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs)
Study Cohorts
Religious Orders Study (ROS)
Nuns and monks
annual cognitive assessments
brain donation
Memory and Aging Project (MAP)
Community-dwelling adults
longitudinal cognitive data
multimodal biomarkers
Additional Cohorts
Banner-Sun Health
viu-Mainz
MassGeneral Institute
University of Kentucky
Major Findings
Novel Target Identification
AMP-AD has identified numerous novel targets:[@chen2020]
TREM2: Microglial receptor (validated)
PLXNA4: Microglial activation
CD33: Immunomodulatory target
Gene Co-Expression Networks
Network analysis reveals:[@wang2018]
Dysregulated modules in AD
Cell-type-specific changes
Hub genes as potential targets
Multi-Omics Integration
Integrated analysis identifies:[@brase2016]
Concordant changes across modalities
Novel gene-disease relationships
Biomarker candidates
Network-Based Drug Repositioning
Computational approaches have identified:[@tian2021]