Alzheimer's Association: Advancing AD/ADRD Research through Collaboration
For more than 45 years, the Alzheimer’s Association has been committed to supporting Alzheimer’s disease research and providing resources for people living with dementia and their families. One of the impactful ways that the Alzheimer’s Association puts their mission into action is through collaboration with other Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (AD/ADRD) research organizations.
Collaboration has been a priority for Maria Carrillo, PhD, Chief Science Officer and Medical Affairs Lead, since joining the Alzheimer’s Association 21 years ago. “Since the beginning of my journey at the Alzheimer’s Association, I have prioritized making connections with leadership at the National Institute on Aging (NIA),” Carrillo said.
One of Carrillo’s first projects to increase collaboration across AD/ADRD organizations was working with the NIA to establish the International Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias Research Portfolio (IADRP). This initiative, which is hosted by the NIA, brings together the funding portfolios of major AD/ADRD funding organizations around the world. It is a valuable resource for researchers and can help shape the funding strategies of the NIA and the Alzheimer’s Association by identifying gaps, trends, and areas of disproportionate funding.
Being aware of funding gaps and priorities has allowed the Alzheimer’s Association to take a coordinated approach to provide funding themselves, and to advocate for an increase in research funding at a national level. “The Alzheimer’s Association has worked very hard with our sister organization, the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement, to drive more than a seven-fold increase in federal research funding, which has translated into increased funding at the [ADRCs].”
This increased funding has also opened the door to studies focused on collecting advanced biomarker and imaging data to further AD/ADRD research, such as the ADRC Consortium for Clarity in ADRD Research Through Imaging (CLARiTI). The relationship between the Alzheimer’s Association and the NIA has also created direct pathways for the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) and the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers (ADRCs) to collaborate with the Alzheimer’s Association, as well.
For example, the Alzheimer’s Association hosts an online research platform, the Global Alzheimer’s Association Interactive Network (GAAIN), that allows researchers to explore diverse data sets available at partner organizations. Researchers can create data cohorts and analyze data all in one place, and when they are ready to request data directly from the individual organizations, they can easily access those resources from the GAAIN site. NACC was one of the first data partners on the GAAIN platform and maintains one of the largest cohorts of data among all partner organizations. GAAIN is just one of many ways that the Alzheimer’s Association, NACC, and the ADRC Program prioritize collaboration to support AD/ADRD research.
New Investigator Award Program
One of the most recent pathways created to further collaboration between the Alzheimer’s Association, NACC, and the ADRC Program is through their support of the New Investigator Award Program (NIAP). NACC has provided funding for early career investigators since 2005, but in 2024, the program expanded significantly with support from the Alzheimer’s Association.
Before this partnership was established, NACC typically awarded two to three early career investigator grants per year. The initial expansion raised that baseline to 10 awards annually at $135,000 in direct costs per award and helped drive a more than 329% increase in applications. Since 2024, the Alzheimer’s Association has contributed more than $5 million to NIAP awardees, and the program has exceeded that expanded baseline in both years, with 13 awards distributed in 2024 and 23 awards distributed in 2025.
Carrillo is especially passionate about the impact of early career funding as a result of receiving pilot program funding when she was working as a postdoctoral researcher at Rush University. While some ADRCs offer their own funding opportunities, many are more limited in scope. Carrillo hopes to build on this expansion to continue supporting early career investigators at the ADRCs.
Looking Towards the Future
The Alzheimer’s Association is committed to ensuring the translation and implementation of AD/ADRD research continues to make disease-modifying therapeutics and biomarker-driven diagnosis more readily available and impactful. Part of this commitment to furthering the next stage of Alzheimer’s treatment and prevention includes encouraging and maximizing the utilization of the clinical care that is already available to patients living with dementia, including at the ADRCs. “The ADRCs are centers of excellence for research, but they’re also centers of excellence for clinical care,” Carrillo said.
Carrillo hopes to expand the Alzheimer's Association's work with the ADRCs by integrating their clinical data from people receiving newly approved disease-modifying drugs into the Alzheimer’s Network for Treatment and Diagnostics (ALZ-NET). ALZ-NET is a platform sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association to track the long-term health and safety outcomes associated with these and future approved treatments. Goals include using real-world data to shape both the current use of treatments and the future of AD/ADRD research, including diagnostic tools and therapeutics.
As the field of AD/ADRD research progresses, the Alzheimer’s Association, NACC, and the ADRC Program continue to prioritize early career researchers, and work together to build and maintain relationships that streamline scientific advances and provide life-changing diagnostics and treatments to people living with dementia and their families.