Sage Bionetworks integrates CAVATICA into the NIH Alzheimer’s Disease Knowledge Portal to increase reusability of datasets in Alzheimer’s research

The integration of the cloud compute environment provides an additional analytical framework for accelerating discoveries in Alzheimer’s disease.

SEATTLE, WA – The AD Knowledge Portal, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and developed and maintained by Sage Bionetworks to promote open collaboration in Alzheimer’s research, has integrated the data analysis and integration platform CAVATICA into its current workspace, supporting greater data reuse across the broader research community.

As part of a greater goal to provide seamless, secure access to biomedical datasets in as many analytical environments as possible, the integration enables researchers to export data from the AD Knowledge Portal directly to the existing CAVATICA cloud-based analysis platform.

“This is an exciting step to better enable reuse of rich, multi-omic data from the AD Knowledge Portal,” says Anna Greenwood, PhD, Director of Alzheimer’s Disease Translational Research at Sage Bionetworks. “This integration will equip users with a diverse set of data and move us closer to the treatment or prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.”

CAVATICA was co-developed by Velsera (formerly SevenBridges) and the Center for Data Driven Discovery in Biomedicine. Today, CAVATICA supports multiple data ecosystems, including the Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program, the INCLUDE Project (INvestigation of Co-occurring conditions across the Lifespan to Understand Down syndromE), and consortia like the Rare Disease Clinical Research Network. CAVATICA provides toolsets to support a diverse spectrum of research, from low-code to packed workflows, to interactive analysis. The integration of CAVATICA with the AD Knowledge Portal now provides users with multiple sophisticated tools to further analyze portal data, combine it with other research datasets, and make novel discoveries in the field of Alzheimer’s disease.

After connecting their CAVATICA account to the Sage Bionetworks flagship data platform, Synapse, authorized users can identify their data set of interest on the AD Knowledge Portal. These users can export the data to the CAVATICA workspace to run downstream analyses.

The integration of external platforms with the AD Knowledge Portal will provide users in the community with an alternative to downloading the files directly to their local work environment and empower collaboration across geographically dispersed researchers. It will also improve what is known as data “interoperability,” which refers to the ability of different systems, applications and software to work together, share information, and use the exchanged data without loss of meaning, security, or functionality.

The AD Knowledge Portal is an NIH-designated FAIR data repository, originally established in 2015 as part of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership in Alzheimer’s Disease (AMP AD) Program. AMP AD is a pre-competitive public private partnership among the National Institutes of Health, FDA, pharmaceutical industry and nonprofit organizations. Managed by the Foundation of the NIH, this partnership has supported an open science, big data approach to understand the complex biology of Alzheimer’s disease and to accelerate the discovery of the next generation therapeutic targets and biomarkers.

The Portal has since grown to support over a dozen research consortia and translational centers supported by the National Institute of Aging (NIA), such as MODEL-AD to develop new animal models and biomarkers of Alzheimer’s that are relevant to human disease; TREAT-AD to diversify and reinvigorate the drug development pipeline; and Psych-AD to understand the molecular mechanisms of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The AD Knowledge Portal is supported by the NIH through grants U24AG061340, U24AG078753, RF1AG057443.

Disclaimer: Sage Bionetworks may integrate with, and provide links to, compute environments as an alternative to downloading files. These integrations or provisions do not signify an endorsement of that particular environment by Sage Bionetworks or funders, nor does it alter the relationship between Sage Bionetworks, existing data contributors, project sponsors or funders, or computational providers.

Furthermore, it is the responsibility of individual users to review the terms of data use for each compute environment, as well as for the portal or repository from which the data is sourced. Users must personally ensure that all data access terms and conditions are met.