Alzheimer’s is a disease of aging.
In 95% of Alzheimer’s cases, cognitive symptoms emerge after the age of 65, and the likelihood of a diagnosis increases with each passing year. By age 85, about one in three individuals has the disease. Even people with early-onset familial Alzheimer’s do not develop symptoms until middle age. Yet not everyone experiences cognitive decline with age. Despite long-held beliefs that dementia is an inevitable part of aging, it is not. The many examples around us of active, cognitively healthy people in their 80s, 90s, and beyond offer hope that healthy brain aging can be available to all of us. However, the precise biological changes that transform the aging brain into one that is either susceptible to or resilient against AD have remained unclear.
With the advent of powerful new technologies to study thousands of molecules in a single sample, rich human data from large cohorts collected over many years, and novel ways to model aging in the lab, new opportunities to study brain aging are emerging. In 2025, CureAlz launched the Brain Aging Consortium, a transformative effort uniting six world-renowned Alzheimer’s researchers and their teams, each approaching aging and Alzheimer’s from unique but complementary perspectives. Their diverse expertise in aging biology, biomarker discovery, genetics, neuroscience and Alzheimer’s research creates a tightly integrated environment where insights from one group accelerate progress in another.
The consortium is tackling three major questions: How do biological changes during aging contribute to Alzheimer’s risk? What biological markers reveal signs of disease before symptoms appear? Is brain aging accelerated in Alzheimer’s, and what distinguishes those who remain cognitively sharp from those who develop the disease? Answering these questions could unlock strategies to promote healthy brain aging and prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
To do so, the Brain Aging Consortium is focusing on three strategies:
- Comparing Groups Across the Aging Spectrum: Consortium laboratories are studying brain aging at multiple time points in unique cohorts. At one end are individuals carrying rare gene variants causing early-onset Alzheimer’s who develop symptoms in middle age, before most changes associated with brain aging. At the other end are centenarians who remain cognitively sharp despite living to age 100 and longer. These individuals have either resisted the development of amyloid plaques and tau tangles or stayed cognitively resilient despite them, even when carrying the APOE4 risk gene. In the middle are those individuals across the adult lifespan whose brain aging follows the typical straight line. The approach provides a powerful opportunity to study Alzheimer’s disease independently of brain aging and exceptional brain aging independently of disease by focusing on unique populations that do not follow the typical line of aging.
- Tracking Cellular Changes: Using leading-edge tools, consortium researchers are profiling proteins, lipids, gene activity and epigenetics at the single-cell level across different brain regions, including the choroid plexus, and cell types. Beyond brain tissue, they are measuring changes in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. They also are using the aging model developed by Dr. Yoo’s lab to watch how aging unfolds in the laboratory.
- Uncovering Patterns Through Big Data: The consortium is generating incredibly rich datasets that capture the wide range of biological molecules and processes across its studies. Aligning these diverse types of data between laboratories opens new possibilities to uncover previously unrecognized patterns and relationships—revealing where disease deviates from the line of healthy aging and pointing to novel therapeutic targets.
Having launched their partnership, the groups meet regularly to discuss data, share progress and actively collaborate across projects, leveraging each other’s insights to tackle the complex interplay between aging and Alzheimer’s. By integrating their findings, the consortium teams are building the most comprehensive picture yet of how aging shapes brain health and are positioned to accomplish what no individual researcher, laboratory or institution can achieve alone: uncover how biological aging drives Alzheimer’s risk to identify the earliest, most effective points for intervention.