Abstract Body

Animal models of late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease are valuable resources to understand the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). For the past few decades, mouse models that harbor autosomal dominant mutations found in familial AD and other dementias have been the gold standard for the field. These models have been proven invaluable for understanding key features of AD pathology and for helping to evaluate and discover new therapeutic targets and disease-modifying strategies. As the field advances, so too must our development of animal models, with particular emphasis being focused on generating models of late-onset AD. The goal of the MODEL-AD consortium is to produce, characterize and make available the next generation of animal models for AD through comprehensive and systematic analysis (deep-phenotyping), and to standardize a phenotyping pipeline to understand the strength of each model. The Consortium is led by NIA, and our ongoing collaborative efforts take place at different locations across the US (University of California, Irvine, Jackson laboratory, University of Pittsburgh, Indiana University and Sage Bionetworks). Analyses include functional phenotyping, gene expression and network analysis, pathology, and biochemical analysis to obtain comprehensive results, which will be openly accessible to the scientific community through the AD Knowledge Portal.