# A high throughput multiplexed pipeline for models of Alzheimer’s Disease

> **NIH NIH R44** · TISSUEVISION, INC. · 2024 · $1,242,279

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects roughly 10% of people over the age of 65 in the United States
and extracts an enormous personal and financial toll on the nation. Despite decades of
investment there exists no cure nor effective treatment. Contributing factors behind the
difficulty include the complex, multifactorial nature of AD etiology that is refractory to direct
clinical observation especially in its early stages.
As such, research models are of paramount importance as they hold great potential to reveal key
mechanistic details driving the progression of AD in the clinic. This is of particular relevance
today as there is a growing consensus that the A-Beta hypothesis must give way to approaches
that reflect the complex, multifactorial nature of AD. Fortunately, new methods such as spatial
biology are well suited to capture the complexity of protein networks implicated in AD in ways
that traditional histological analysis cannot. Unfortunately, however, barriers to apply spatial
biology in whole tissues and organs are substantial, including high cost of instrumentation,
technically complex workflows, and substantial data management, analysis, and visualization
challenges.
This proposal will help eliminate these barriers by offering a convenient fee-for-service platform
where brains can be sent to be imaged and analyzed. High value region-of-interest tissue
sections can be quickly identified and selected for secondary spatial biology analyses. The
analyzed tissue sections and 3D datasets can then be mapped back to their correct location in in
vivo imaging and brain atlases such as the Allen CCF. Importantly, this project will be built on a
high-performance cloud platform that can handle multi-terabyte multiplexed datasets and serve
them efficiently such that researchers can easily compare treatment effects on a per brain region
basis across age, sex, and mouse model.
This proposal extends the success of a previous NIA proposal that combined teams from
TissueVision and the NIA-funded MODEL-AD Center at The Jackson Laboratory. To build on
this impressive partnership we will be adding Bruker, Inc. a $2.4B manufacturer of scientific
instruments that is currently advancing cutting-edge spatial biology approaches, notably
MALDI-IHC, which will be capable of performing a 60+ plex imaging of tissue datasets. In
addition, the Seattle Veteran’s Administration will be assisting our spatial profiling efforts with
Imaging Mass Cytometry on its Fluidigm Hyperion system. We believe the synergy between
next-generation AD research models, advanced spatial biology instrumentation and data
analysis represents an ideal alliance that holds the promise to deliver an extremely valuable set
of new tools to the AD research community that may finally open the way for effective AD
treatments.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10906250
- **Project number:** 5R44AG084491-02
- **Recipient organization:** TISSUEVISION, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Timothy M. Ragan
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $1,242,279
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-08-15 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10906250

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10906250, A high throughput multiplexed pipeline for models of Alzheimer’s Disease (5R44AG084491-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10906250. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*