Roderic Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D. “The bio-engineers we support are building bio-artifical kidneys, growing functional cartilage, and developing implantable sensors that can detect real-time changes in biochemistry. They are coming up with ways to make tumours glow, supercool organs so that they can stay outside the body longer for transplantation, and store vaccines so they don’t require refrigeration. They are making biomedical technologies better, faster, cheaper, and smaller and, in doing so, are profoundly changing health care in the US and around the world.” “This game is a fun and easy way to introduce a younger generation to the exciting possibilities of bio-engineering. It plants the seed that if you’re interested in science and technology, enjoy being creative, and have a desire to help people, you might consider becoming a bio-engineer,” said Pettigrew. The game can be played on the NIBIB website at <http://www. nibib.nih.gov/science-education> or downloaded for free to your phone or tablet from the iTunes App store.
to apply cutting-edge analytical approaches to integrate molecular and clinical data from over 2 000 post-mortem brain samples. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) at NIH supports and co-ordinates the multidisciplinary groups contributing data to the portal. The AMP Steering Committee for the Alzheimer’s Disease Project is composed of NIA and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, both of NIH, the US Food and Drug Administration, four pharmaceutical companies (AbbVie, Biogen Idec, GlaxoSmithKline and Lilly) and four non-profit groups (Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Geoffrey Beene Foundation and US Against Alzheimer’s) and is managed through the Foundation for the NIH. Because no publication embargo is imposed on the use of the data once they are posted to the AMP-AD Knowledge Portal, it increases the transparency, reproducibility and translatability of basic research discoveries, according to Suzana Petanceska, Ph.D., NIA’s program director leading the AMP-AD Target Discovery Project. “Simply stated, we can work more effectively together than separately,” concluded Petanceska.
New big data portal aims to speed up Alsheimer’s drug discovery A National Institutes of Health-led public-private partnership to transform and accelerate drug development achieved a significant milestone recently with the launch of a new Alzheimer’s Big Data portal – including delivery of the first wave of data – for use by the research community. The new data sharing and analysis resource is part of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership (AMP), an unprecedented venture bringing together NIH, the US Food and Drug Administration, industry and academic scientists from a variety of disciplines to translate knowledge faster and more successfully into new therapies. The opening of the AMP-AD Knowledge Portal and release of the first wave of data will enable sharing and analyses of large and complex biomedical datasets. Researchers believe this approach will ramp up the development of predictive models of Alzheimer’s disease and enable the selection of novel targets that drive the changes in molecular networks leading to the clinical signs and symptoms of the disease. “We are determined to reduce the cost and time it takes to discover viable therapeutic targets and bring new diagnostics and effective therapies to people with Alzheimer’s. That demands a new way of doing business,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “The AD initiative of AMP is one way we can revolutionize Alzheimer’s research and drug development by applying the principles of open science to the use and analysis of large and complex human data sets.” Developed by Sage Bionetworks a Seattle-based non-profit organization promoting open science, the portal will house several waves of Big Data to be generated over the five years of the AMP-AD Target Discovery and Preclinical Validation Project by multi-disciplinary academic groups. The academic teams, in collaboration with Sage Bionetworks data scientists and industry bioinformatics and drug discovery experts, will work collectively
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