# Detecting synergistic effects of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for AD/ADRD

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2024 · $772,030

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementia (AD/ADRD) is a multifactorial and heterogeneous disorder. Most
current studies focus on drug interventions for AD/ADRD and currently none of pharmacological intervention (PI)
discovery research has been translated into effective treatments. However, increasing evidence demonstrates
that non-pharmacological interventions (NPI), such as sleep, diet, dietary supplements, aerobic exercise,
aromatherapy, light therapy, cognitive training, are potentially modifiable and thus offer alternative opportunities
for AD/ADRD prevention. Thus, the objective of this project is to develop translational informatics approaches to
aggregate, standardize and discover the effects of drug and NPI candidates on AD/ADRD using multi-modal
data resources (i.e., biomedical literature, EHR, clinical trials) followed by animal model validation. To achieve
our goal, we propose the following aims: 1) constructing a comprehensive Pharmacological And Non-
Pharmacological Interventions for Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Graph (PANIA-KG) from biomedical literature
and other knowledge bases; 2) detecting, understanding, and visualization of drug repurposing signals of PIs,
NPIs, and their synergistical effects for AD/ADRD using the PANIA-KG; 3) re-ranking and validating individual
and synergistical drug repurposing signals using multimodal data sources and animal models. The successful
completion of this project will deliver a comprehensive NPI knowledge graph, novel informatics approaches,
ranked list of drug and NPI candidates, and validated synergistic intervention using multi-modal data sources.
The generated approaches, PANIA-KG and ranked lists can further our clinical investigations and clinical trial
design which focuses on synergistic effects of drug and NPIs for AD/ADRD.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10892892
- **Project number:** 5R01AG078154-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** HUA XU
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $772,030
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-01 → 2027-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10892892

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10892892, Detecting synergistic effects of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions for AD/ADRD (5R01AG078154-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10892892. Licensed CC0.

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