The Consortium for Biomedical Research and Artificial Intelligence in Neurodegeneration (C-BRAIN) today announced the next stage of its work: building AI models of Alzheimer's disease from the ground up. C-BRAIN is collaborating with NVIDIA to optimize open-access AI models of Alzheimer's disease by applying NVIDIA's expertise in accelerated AI computing.
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Consortium for Biomedical Research and Artificial Intelligence in Neurodegeneration (C-BRAIN) today announced the next stage of its work: building AI models of Alzheimer's disease from the ground up. C-BRAIN is collaborating with NVIDIA to optimize open-access AI models of Alzheimer's disease by applying NVIDIA's expertise in accelerated AI computing.
For the approximately 7 million Americans who have Alzheimer's disease, there is no proven way to stop or prevent it yet. C-BRAIN's mission is to leverage AI to accelerate discoveries that will help prevent and treat neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's. C-BRAIN is a nonprofit, precompetitive collaboration of academic researchers, pharmaceutical companies, AI and technology groups, patient advocacy organizations and philanthropies. As "AI built by scientists, for scientists," C-BRAIN comprises more than 800 researchers who are helping shape its openly available AI resources. With open-access AI systems, scientists can also evaluate how the AI reaches its answers.
"Alzheimer's is one of the grand challenges of our time," said Randall J. Bateman, MD, founder and Director of C-BRAIN and the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Modern AI, such as deep neural networks, gives us a special opportunity to discover causes of Alzheimer's disease and find treatments faster. We look forward to unlocking the potential of these tools in our collaboration with NVIDIA."
These models need huge amounts of computing power, advanced deep neural networks, and efficient and insightful designs to fully optimize discoveries. C-BRAIN and NVIDIA are exploring how NVIDIA software, such as NVIDIA BioNeMo and MONAI, and NVIDIA engineering expertise could accelerate these developments.
"Our AI scientists already help researchers work faster," said Ade Ojewole, PhD, C-BRAIN's chief technology officer. "Next, we want models that learn Alzheimer's biology at multiple physical scales with fewer physical approximations straight from the brain. We're exploring how NVIDIA's software could help us train and test them, and we'll share what we build so researchers everywhere can make breakthroughs."
Developing AI models that learn how Alzheimer's emerges and progresses, directly from human brain data and without language descriptions, is C-BRAIN's second phase of research. Currently, scientists can use two freely available C-BRAIN tools, which can cut months of analysis down to under an hour:
- OpenScientist takes a dataset and a question, tests ideas, performs analyses and statistics, analyzes the data, researches the literature and reports what it finds, working directly with scientists.
- InsightEngine reads the research, tests ideas against data and links every answer to its source.
The development of C-BRAIN AI tools has been supported by a grant for compute resources provided by Microsoft through the NSF's National AI Research Resource program. The research will continue to leverage Microsoft Azure through an ongoing NAIRR deep partnership award.
Learn more and try the tools at c-brain.org.
About C-BRAIN: AI built by scientists, for scientists. C-BRAIN (the Consortium for Biomedical Research and Artificial Intelligence in Neurodegeneration) brings together researchers, drug companies, tech groups, patient advocates and philanthropic funders to build open AI tools for Alzheimer's and related diseases. It was founded at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and is directed by Randall J. Bateman, MD.
C-BRAIN Major Contributing Members
- Alzforum
- AD Data Initiative
- Alzheimer's Association
- Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation
- Anonymous Foundation
- Bristol Myers Squibb
- The Dolby Family
- Gates Ventures
- Johnson & Johnson
- Rainwater Charitable Foundation
- Robertson Foundation
- Sage Bionetworks
- Sanofi
- The 10,000 Brains Project
- WashU Medicine
C-BRAIN Key Members
- The Brigham and Women's Hospital, Inc.
- Eisai Inc.
Media Contact
Amy Jackson, TaleSplash for C-BRAIN, 1 4156092435, [email protected], https://c-brain.org/
SOURCE C-BRAIN
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