Big Data Was the Big Theme at Shortened NIH Summit | ALZFORUM

"Scientists gathered on March 1 in Bethesda, Maryland, for the 2018 NIH Alzheimer’s Disease Research Summit, ready to absorb the 82 presentations scheduled over two days. Then a nor’easter forced closure of U.S. government buildings and put the kibosh on Day 2. Even so, researchers seemed impressed by the summit. Scientists interacted across disciplines with colleagues whom they might not otherwise meet, and the NIH took away 75 pages of funding recommendations for future research. “There were a lot of interesting ideas, from basic science to clinical studies,” said Marco Colonna, Washington University, St. Louis. “It was a bit overwhelming, but extremely valuable.”

This was the third AD research summit hosted by the NIH, as mandated by the National Alzheimer’s Project Act. Recommendations from the first two summits in 2012 and 2015 helped shape the NIA-funded research agenda. With the NIH budget for AD and related disorders almost tripling to $1.414 billion in the last three years, the third summit has the potential to make a major impact on the field. As NIH Director Francis Collins emphasized in his opening address, this is a critical time in Alzheimer’s research. “Any notion that a quick path to prevention or treatment was going to emerge from 2012 … has turned out to be naïve,” Collins said. But he noted that the field knows more than in 2012 and urged leaders to bring boldness, audacious optimism, and a readiness to consider dramatic new approaches to the problem...."