Researchers focused on understanding and treating Alzheimer’s disease will now have access to massive amounts of data, thanks to a collaborative effort between the Alzheimer’s Association and the Brin Wojcicki Foundation, established by Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, andAnne Wojcicki, the co-founder of 23andMe, a personal genetics company. Together, the association and foundation launched the Big Data project for Alzheimer’s disease, which collected whole genome sequences on a the 800 people enrolled in the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), a public-private research project led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with private sector support through the Foundation for NIH. Information about the collaboration and big data project was shared Thursday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2013, being held in Boston.
The data will be made available to researchers through the Global Alzheimer’s Association Interactive Network (GAAIN), a network of Alzheimer’s disease research data made available by researchers and funded by a $5 million dollar investment by the Alzheimer’s Association. GAAIN is similar to other big data efforts that aim to improve tools to make discoveries from massive amounts of digital data, but GAAIN is focused on the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, according to organizers.
“With the addition of more than 800 whole genomes on ADNI subjects that can be linked to the current rich dataset, ADNI data will be even more useful to scientists who are seeking new approaches to treatment and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Robert C. Green, M.D., M.P.H., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who led the ADNI sequencing project. “ADNI is a leader in open data sharing, having provided clinical, imaging and biomarker data to over 4,000 qualified scientists around the world, which has generated over 700 scientific manuscripts.” 
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