Welcome to the first Diagnostics Accelerator Investigators’ Meeting!

As we mark two years since inception of the Diagnostics Accelerator (DxA), this is an ideal time to bring together our funded investigators, funding partners and the DxA team in an interactive forum to share information about ongoing research, deliberate new ideas, and advance our shared vision of finding easier, more accurate and earlier ways to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

In July 2018, driven by the conviction that the path to approved Alzheimer’s treatments begins with a better way to diagnose patients, the DxA issued a call to action to the research community to advance bold new ideas to accelerate the development, validation and licensure of affordable and scalable diagnostic biomarkers.

To date we have awarded or earmarked over $35 million to a diverse group of researchers representing academia and industry globally. We have been amazed at the breadth, depth and ingenuity of the research represented as part of the DxA.

Over the next two days, leading academic scientists, entrepreneurs, startup companies, funding organizations, and others who are part of this collaborative effort, will engage in discussion around:

• Cutting-edge science in the field of Alzheimer’s and related dementias
• Methods and targets for minimally-invasive blood tests, ocular tests, and digital tools
• Research highlights and preliminary findings
• Strategies for translating biomarker research into clinical use

We hope that you all will take this opportunity to connect with other cutting-edge researchers, learn from each other, and exchange ideas to further accelerate your research and the field more broadly.

We are grateful for the vision and support of Bill Gates and ADDF’s Co-Founder/Co-Chair Leonard A. Lauder and all the core funders, including the Dolby family, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott, and The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, and others to bring the focus, resources and urgency required to solve this important problem. With $50 million in commitments from our funding partners, there will be many more exciting research awards to come.

But today, we thank each of you for being among the first to respond to our call to action. Together, we can enable the global community to conquer Alzheimer’s disease.

We look forward to a thought-provoking and insightful meeting.

Best Wishes,

Howard Fillit, MD Founding Executive Director and Chief Science Officer Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation	Niranjan Bose, PhD Managing Director of Health & Life Sciences Gates Ventures