Four decades of Alzheimer's disease discoveries, data, and research resources: The NIH Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Program.

The Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers (ADRC) program, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), is a national network for conducting cutting-edge basic, clinical, and translational Alzheimer's disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRD) research. ADRCs collect clinical, biomarker, neuroimaging, and autopsy data on thousands of longitudinally followed research participants and the well-characterized data and samples generated by the ADRCs are readily available to the research community. Beyond conducting research, the primary objectives of the ADRC program are to train the next generation of multidisciplinary AD/ADRD researchers and share information with the public, including the latest findings and opportunities to participate in clinical studies. This article provides an overview of the 40-year history of the ADRC program, from its establishment by Congress in 1984 to now, highlighting the AD/ADRD scientific achievements enabled by the ADRCs, the data, samples, and resources that ADRCs provide, and future directions for the program.