Global think tank the Milken Institute has published an action plan on how to better harness AI and precision medicine to address neurodegenerative disease.
The report aims to serve as a resource for patient advocates, philanthropists, researchers, policymakers, and industry to work together to accelerate the ethical adoption of these emerging technologies for maximum impact.
This publication is the result of a nine-month study led by the Milken Institute Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research Collaboration (SPARC) and commissioned by The 10,000 Brains Project.
Additional financial support was provided by the Robertson Foundation and Rainwater Charitable Foundation, which both were represented on the project’s steering committee.
Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, affect over 50 million people worldwide.
The World Health Organisation estimates that by the year 2040, neurodegenerative disorders will overtake cancer as the second most common cause of death in developed countries.
These are highly complex disorders that are notoriously difficult to diagnose. Treatment options are currently limited, but AI may enable researchers to take entirely new approaches and untangle their complexities.
The new roadmap outlines four high-priority opportunities where philanthropic investment and new partnerships can have a transformative impact for the research ecosystem and patients in need.
The 10,000 Brain Project has committed to support and coordinate relevant projects in each of these areas on behalf of the research community:
Improve data quality, infrastructure, and access: Increase data accessibility and quality and develop supporting data infrastructure. Leverage existing data platforms and infrastructure to build a federated data ecosystem. Support data curation and harmonization across disorders. Fill gaps in existing datasets in terms of participant diversity, disease type, and data modality.
Train an interdisciplinary workforce: Bridge training in neuroscience and computational biology. Support the training of computational neuroscientists through programs that support cross-functional training on real-world projects.
Strategically engage artificial intelligence: Support AI-enabling resource development and the validation of AI tools. Support initiatives spanning multiple disorders and pilot studies that develop AI tools with the potential for translational impact. Build an ecosystem that supports the storage, validation, and recommendation of datasets and tools for AI-based research.
Develop and engage ethics standards and support: Develop and increase adherence to the highest standards for protecting participants and their data with an emphasis on specific protections for the vast amounts of data and cross-institutional collaborations that AI involves. Ensure that AI research integrates diverse participants so that findings benefit all patients regardless of socioeconomic status, location, race, education, etc.
Cara Altimus, managing director of Milken Institute SPARC, said: “AI advances represent a huge area of untapped potential to leverage data across neurodegenerative disorders to develop biologically based precision approaches.
“It can be a game-changer for researchers integrating massive, multimodal datasets from diverse human subjects. The 10,000 Brains Project is showing how strategic philanthropic investment can integrate critical data, ethics, and training components to ensure that the field can make the most of AI’s potential.”
Patrick Brannelly, CEO of The 10,000 Brains Project, said, “This roadmap was developed through extensive due diligence and the integration of perspectives from a wide range of experts and stakeholders. Implementing the roadmap will require similar levels of effort and collaboration. There’s a lot of work to do, but it’s an extremely exciting time to be a supporter of neurodegeneration research. We hope others will join us on this journey.”
