NIH funds AI project to advance Alzheimer’s research and treatment

The National Institutes of Health has renewed support for Artificial Intelligence for Alzheimer's Disease, or AI4AD. The new $12.6 million award to advance the project's next phase, AI4AD2, brings its total investment in AI4AD to $30.7 million. Led by Paul M. Thompson, PhD, associate director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the multi-institutional initiative will develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools to uncover the biological causes of Alzheimer's and related dementias, improve predictions of disease progression, and help develop more precise treatment options.

AI4AD2 unites 10 investigators and 23 co-investigators from 10 institutions in pursuit of four interconnected research goals. The consortium will analyze large-scale datasets, including whole-genome sequencing, brain imaging, cognitive testing, and other biological data, to advance the diagnosis and treatment of dementia. This work builds on the original AI4AD initiative launched in 2020, which developed AI tools to detect Alzheimer's-related patterns in brain scans and showed how machine learning can link imaging findings to underlying genetic risk.

As we age, our brains decline. But each of us has a unique mix of degenerative processes going on in our brains. We may have a mix of Alzheimer's pathology, vascular disease, and brain changes more typical of Parkinson's disease-all of them proceeding at different rates. This mix of pathologies makes dementia hard to treat. With AI4AD2, we are launching a program of genome-guided drug discovery, enabling researchers to identify novel drugs that target specific types of dementia, including the rarer subtypes."

Paul M. Thompson, PhD, associate director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI), Keck School of Medicine of USC