The Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) was launched in 2004 with $40 million in initial funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Its primary aim is to improve Alzheimer's disease (AD) clinical trials, with this expected to translate into improved patient care. Since 2006, ADNI has shared clinical, neuroimaging and cognitive data and biofluid samples. ADNI investigators led by Michael Weiner, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, recently reviewed the initiative's sponsored trials from 2021 to 2022. Authors identified 1,459 publications from 2021 to 2022 that used ADNI data/samples and then reviewed the impact of 291 of these studies. The review published in the journal Alzheimer's and Dementia, details how ADNI studies improved disease progression understanding and clinical trial efficiency.
ADNI samples contributed to the development of plasma biomarkers such as phosphorylated tau for clinical use, and described prognostic abilities of amyloid beta, tau, neurodegeneration and inflammation biomarkers. Studies supported the amyloid cascade and detailed how genetic and vascular risk, co-pathologies, sex and resilience contribute to heterogeneity and biological subtypes of the disease. However, authors noted that the results may not be generalisable due to the limited cohort diversity. The ADNI-3 study recently drawn to a close and ADNI launched its latest study, ADNI-4, with an increased commitment to enroll participants from underrepresented populations in clinical trials. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37698424/