Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) fosters collaboration, generates research-enabling resources, and promotes data sharing to accelerate discovery around the world, within and outside the existing Parkinson’s disease (PD) community. We currently support three initiatives, all with the goal of advancing research for the benefit of the entire PD community.
The ASAP Collaborative Research Network (CRN) is an international, multidisciplinary, and multi-institutional network of collaborating investigators that facilitates the rapid and free exchange of scientific ideas to spark new discoveries for PD. Each CRN team supports productive collaborations, includes diverse talents, and embraces the values of openness and transparency to accelerate outcomes and the impact of findings.
The Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (GP2) is working to genotype over 250,000 volunteers from around the world – helping to ensure ancestral diversity is included in PD-related genetic research and making PD genetics globally relevant. GP2’s commitment to serving underrepresented populations extends to providing tools, trainings, and other resources to PD researchers around the world.
The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) is a landmark observational study focused on supporting worldwide strategies for investigating and defining biomarker signatures of PD risk, onset, and progression. PPMI makes its data set and biorepository – the most robust in PD to date – available to academia and industry to accelerate breakthroughs.
Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s is also a member of research consortia. These efforts work together to help us and the PD research field move closer to accelerating scientific advances by fostering a collaborative and open approach to research through open science.
The Accelerating Medicine Partnership in Parkinson’s Disease (AMP® PD) is a public-private partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH), multiple biopharmaceutical and life science companies, and nonprofit organizations. Managed through the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH), AMP® PD aims to harmonize PD and related disease datasets across the community with the goal of identifying and validating diagnostic, prognostic, and/or progression biomarkers for PD, with an emphasis on broadening data sharing in the biomedical community to advance PD research. ASAP is proud to be a partner in the AMP® PD effort to broaden data sharing in the biomedical community to advance PD research. Both GP2 and PPMI cohorts share their data on this platform.
ASAP is proud to join alongside philanthropic organizations as a member of The Open Research Funders Group (ORFG). ORFG is a partnership of funding organizations committed to the open sharing of research outputs and other forms of scholarship. The ORFG has two primary programmatic pillars: (1) engaging philanthropies in a community of practice to develop, implement, oversee, and advance strategies that accelerate access to funded research, including papers and data; and (2) serving as the funders’ voice in cross-sector discussions about open research policies, incentives, infrastructure, and good practices.
ASAP is a proud member of Plan S, an initiative for Open Access publishing. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funding and performing organizations. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.
Advancing PD Research
Our initiative is accelerating the pace of discovery and informing a path to a cure for Parkinson’s disease through collaboration, research-enabling resources, and data sharing.
