Broad and Deep Analyses in Neurodegeneration (BRAIN)

Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) in Canada has funded a Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA: www.ccna-ccnv.ca) to become the major vehicle to coordinate and strengthen Canadian research on dementia (including Alzheimer Disease and other neurodegenerative diseases). The CCNA overall objectives are, through its teams, to carry out transformative research that advances understanding of the biology, natural history, clinical presentation and management of these serious conditions, resulting in new and better treatment of these diseases. In this proposal, a team of scientists from across Canada are coming together to leverage three sets of studies and databases in order to carry out "big data" analyses to provide new insights into dementia and search for better treatments and better understanding of dementia risk factors. These studies are the COMPASS-ND study of the CCNA, a 20 year population study of aging in Canada called CLSA, (the Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging), and a rich administrative database called interRAI, or MDS RAI, which assesses individuals in home care and nursing homes. We will focus on building the infrastructure for longitudinal studies which track the trajectory of dementia in these three datasets, building normal comparison groups, developing algorithms for delineating cognitive decline in the CLSA, and assess the ethical questions involved in big research on dementia. A major goal will be to position these Canadian studies to work together with international groups, particularly in areas such as genomics, where thousands of individuals must be pooled together to get novel insights. The team will be administered by the current CCNA administrative structure at the Lady Davis Institute at McGill University, and will lay the groundwork for "big data studies in dementia" over the coming decade.