• Collaborations
• Recognition & Visibility
• Knowledge and Information Sharing
• Company summaries

• Agenda/Meeting Minutes
• Publications
• Newsletter
• Webinars
• Translational Animal Models

Collaborations are very valuable to small companies as a way to share resources, expand infrastructure, save money and potentially create income. The consortia will provide a platform for companies looking for collaboration opportunities within the consortia between member companies. The Alzheimer’s Association will provide a space on their web-site for the consortia companies to share information and develop relationships. The consortia members will also share ideas on how to develop collaborations with large companies external to the consortia.

Small companies will benefit from publications and positive publicity. As such, the AABC will look for ways to bring companies in this sector to the attention of the AD R&D community through publications and posters. As an example, the AABC may present a poster at an upcoming AAIC.

The AABC will look for ways to share knowledge and information in a pre-competitive space. The group will share information about each member companies. They may also share information on trusted consultants, CRO’s, ways to manage data in a small company, funding strategies and funding sources.

• 3R
• Accera
• Acelot
• ADMdx
• AdVax
• Altoida
• Amylyx Pharmaceuticals
• Asceneuron
• Aulesa
• BioPegasus LLC
• CSP Telemedicine
• DC Limited
• InterVivo
• M3 Biotechnology, Inc.
• NanoSomiX
• NeuraMetrix
• NeuroScios
• nPharmakon
• Presympto
• Proclara
• QMENTA
• Siragen
• SynAging
• Telocyte
• Treventis

For the purposes of the AABC Working Group, the following description of Alzheimer's disease translational models is proposed.

Translational animal models of Alzheimer's disease should parallel both the development of progressive clinical pathology in humans with Alzheimer's disease as well as the symptomatology including deficits across multiple cognitive domains and in activities of daily living. Interventions that change the course of pathology or cognitive/symptomatic outcomes in the animal models will be validated if they also change the course of pathology in Alzheimer's patients in a similar fashion, or vice versa. To enhance their utility for drug discovery purposes, the pathological features measured over the course of the disease may include fluid-based biomarkers and metabolites, changes in brain/body pathologies measured by MRI or PET, biochemical changes in the brain detected by MRS, post-mortem neuropathological hallmarks of the disease as well as synaptic loss and inflammation, and quantifiable changes in cognitive function measured using multi-cognitive domain specific testing.

The validity of animal models to predict likely effects in human clinical trials is challenging for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease due to species differences across numerous factors. As such, the limitations of each animal model must be recognized. In general, the animal model with the fewest number of limitations will have the greatest potential value to predict human outcomes. A further challenge is to decide which clinical outcomes are the most informative for predicting clinical success of Alzheimer's disease therapeutics. Since Alzheimer's disease develops over time, the clinical outcomes measured may need to be different at different disease stages, or times of disease progression, and animal models demonstrating a greater number of testable modalities that parallel this progressive nature of the disease will have greater value.