For families living with Alzheimer's disease, progress has often felt slower than the science promised. Many people hoped we would be further along by now. Gregory Moore, MD, PhD, has seen that tension from both sides of the field.

Dr. Moore is Senior Adviser to Gates Ventures on the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) and Professor of Radiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry at Penn State University. He is an engineer and neuroradiologist by training. He spent the first half of his career in academic research and clinical care for patients with brain illness, including Alzheimer's disease, publishing widely and writing NIH grants. His engineering side then pulled him into neuroinformatics, data science, and AI, a path that led to Google, then Microsoft, and now Gates Ventures.

His conclusion from that journey is that data, and how we work together, may matter as much as any single discovery.

"AI and biology are, at this moment, changing what may be possible for us," Dr. Moore says. "And we can turn that momentum into meaningful progress for people with or at risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias." He describes leaning into brain health as "core to who I was and am as a researcher and physician." He adds that "we have the opportunity to radically accelerate progress in this field."

The Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative is a not-for-profit philanthropy launched around 2020 to remove one of the field's core blockers: access to data, and the ability to share it.

"The Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative is really infrastructure that makes AI discovery possible," Dr. Moore explains. "For Alzheimer's and related dementias, AI tools are only as useful as the harmonized, accessible data behind them."

The flagship of that infrastructure is AD Workbench, a free, cloud-based platform. Dr. Moore says it now hosts 380 of the most meaningful and largest datasets available for neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer's disease. It has more than 15,000 brain researchers engaged from 129 countries. Researchers get more than data: the platform includes AI tools and computing power, and new users can be provisioned the same day they sign up.

AD Data Initiative also acts as a convener. In recent years, it brought leading scientists together to ask how AI could radically speed up the research needed to deliver treatments for patients, families, and caregivers. The group published its conclusions in Nature Medicine. The work spans areas including data sharing, faster clinical trials, and the development of new molecules.

Asked to square the industry's AI optimism with the fatigue many families feel, Dr. Moore points to a convergence he has watched build over his career.

"The power of compute has finally caught up to be relevant to the complexity of biology, and that's only happened in the last 18 months," he says. He calls AlphaFold's Nobel Prize "a symbol that we've reached an inflection point."

The biology is moving too. Blood-based biomarkers can now indicate whether someone is being affected by Alzheimer's disease many years before symptoms begin, possibly a decade or more. Two disease-modifying treatments have been approved, and Dr. Moore notes that 30 more are in Phase 3 clinical trials.

AI could help researchers keep pace with all of it. "For a disease as complex as Alzheimer's, no individual scientist or lab can solve the issue or synthesize everything this field is producing alone right now," Dr. Moore says. Agentic AI systems, he explains, can act as "extra scientists in your lab," taking on time-consuming tasks such as data harmonization, hypothesis generation, and experimental design.

"The science has never been more compelling," he says. "We have the best tools we've ever had, and they're only going to get better."

That conviction led AD Data Initiative to launch the Alzheimer's Insights AI Prize. The response was striking: 180 applications from 32 countries. Dr. Moore says ten semifinalists were brought to the last Alzheimer's Insight Summit in Copenhagen.

"We were only going to give one $1 million prize, but things were so compelling that we ended up giving two $1 million prizes," Dr. Moore says. One went to Biomni AD, an AI co-scientist dedicated to Alzheimer's disease. The other went to Prima Mente, which is building a virtual wet lab to accelerate discovery. AD Data Initiative also committed to supporting the work of the other semifinalists.

The most telling detail may be who won. "Our winners were from adjacent fields," Dr. Moore notes. "They weren't only coming from a basic science lab or from a clinical lab, but from tech and data and even mathematics." In his experience, people from adjacent fields see a problem differently, and that creates new collaborations and new ideas.

In an era when a lot of work can happen through an AI assistant or a video call, why bring people together in a room? For Dr. Moore, the answer is urgency.

"Bringing together people who are inclined to move fast with a sense of urgency this disease requires creates a catalytic environment for progress," he says.

That belief shapes the next chapter. The Alzheimer's Insight Summit 4 takes place alongside CTAD (Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease) in Boston on November 16. It is co-hosted by AD Data Initiative, StartUp Health, CTRL at the USC Schaeffer Center, and the ADDF Diagnostics Accelerator (DxA). Dr. Moore says special announcements are coming at the Summit, building on the momentum of the AI Prize. Register for the Alzheimer's Insight Summit 4.

StartUp Health has been building the Alzheimer's and Brain Health Moonshot since early 2024, when it launched with support from Gates Ventures and the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), and that work runs on the same principle. When you bring people together consistently and play the long game, collaborations emerge that no one could have planned.

For early-stage founders working in Alzheimer's, longevity, and age tech, Dr. Moore's advice is direct.

"Go to the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative website and sign up for AD Workbench," he says. "You can be provisioned today, have access to a significant amount of data as well as a community, as well as tools, and this is all free to use. Join this community, and I think you'll see this community welcome your ideas."

For Dr. Moore, the work is as much about how we collaborate as about what we discover. "If we can change the way we work together to share data and insights, all for one of the most compelling, challenging problems of our time," he says, "what would I rather be doing?"

The future of brain health will be AI-powered and deeply human. That future depends on shared data, open communities, and people willing to move with urgency. Watch or listen to the full conversation with Dr. Moore, explore AD Workbench, and join us in Boston for the Alzheimer's Insight Summit 4.