A separating factor for quasi-state agencies such as the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), is its ability to convene and leverage the power of public-private partnership. For instance, the MLSC in collaboration with Alzheimer Disease Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital brings together company partners with researchers focused on understanding Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases to further research and collaboration in this space.
Launched in 2013, the consortium originally adopted a broad interest in neurological diseases with a focus on neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases. To this day, the Neuroscience Consortium continues to fund pre-clinical neuroscience research at Massachusetts academic and research institutions. Companies that have participated in the Consortium include AbbVie, Biogen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, General Electric, Janssen, Lundbeck, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sunovion Pharmaceuticals, EMD, and Johnson & Johnson.
Nearly $10 million has been committed by consortium members to fund research through this program, resulting in significant contributions to the field. To date, more than 40 projects have been funded, with several others supported in-kind. Analysis on 23 projects reported 30.8 million in follow-on funding—a return on investment of more than 12 times the initial investment. This includes five sponsored research agreements with industry and numerous National Institutes of Health and foundation grants. Additionally, the Consortium’s achievements include 80 publications, four patents, and one completed clinical trial, one ongoing clinical trial, and one clinical trial starting next month showcasing its pivotal role in advancing Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative disease research.
The MLSC recently recognized Bradley T. Hyman, MD, PhD who has served as Director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer Disease Research Center, for his leadership in the Neuroscience Consortium/MassCATS program, his commitment to advancing pre-clinical research in Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases and fostering collaboration between academia and industry.
It has also helped lead to greater access to critical data for neuroscientists. This includes DataLENS, a web-based platform to share and analyze publicly available interactive datasets. A prevailing challenge in Alzheimer’s research remains the heterogeneous nature of current platforms being utilized. This status quo makes it almost impossible for a neuroscientist to summarize the findings across studies for their gene or pathway of interest. To address this problem, Alzheimer DataLENS was developed as a portal that aims to advance research in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias by making data easily accessible to all scientists.
DataLENS provides easy-to-use web interfaces for query and visualization of research data, and allows neuroscientists to share, browse, and visualize comprehensive results from bioinformatics analysis of public datasets. To date, more than eight publications have been supported by DataLENs analyses.
Click here to learn more about the Neuroscience Consortium.
