TY - JOUR
T1 - Interdisciplinary research in Alzheimer's disease and the roles international societies can play
AU - Tan, Shawn Zheng Kai
AU - Zhao, Robert Chunhua
AU - Chakrabarti, Sasanka
AU - Stambler, Ilia
AU - Jin, Kunlin
AU - Lim, Lee Wei
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2020 Tan SZK et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - An ever-increasing ageing population has elevated Alzheimer's disease to be one of the biggest challenges in modern medicine. Alzheimer's disease is highly complex, and we are still no closer to understanding the causes, let alone an effective treatment. The lack of good experimental models and lack of critical understanding has led to high failure rates of clinical trials with high associated costs, as well as difficulties in implementing treatments. The multifaceted nature of this disease highlights the need for an interdisciplinary approach to address these concerns. In this essay, we suggest how collaborative work can be useful in addressing some of the above issues. We then propose that international organisations and publishers need to support interdisciplinary research by creating platforms, lobbying funders, and pushing for interdisciplinary publications. We further highlight some of the issues involved in implementing these suggestions and argue that willpower of the research community, together with a re-evaluation of evaluation metrics and incentive systems, are needed in order to foster interdisciplinary research. Overall, we emphasise the need for interdisciplinary research in Alzheimer's disease and suggest that international societies should play a huge role in this endeavour.
AB - An ever-increasing ageing population has elevated Alzheimer's disease to be one of the biggest challenges in modern medicine. Alzheimer's disease is highly complex, and we are still no closer to understanding the causes, let alone an effective treatment. The lack of good experimental models and lack of critical understanding has led to high failure rates of clinical trials with high associated costs, as well as difficulties in implementing treatments. The multifaceted nature of this disease highlights the need for an interdisciplinary approach to address these concerns. In this essay, we suggest how collaborative work can be useful in addressing some of the above issues. We then propose that international organisations and publishers need to support interdisciplinary research by creating platforms, lobbying funders, and pushing for interdisciplinary publications. We further highlight some of the issues involved in implementing these suggestions and argue that willpower of the research community, together with a re-evaluation of evaluation metrics and incentive systems, are needed in order to foster interdisciplinary research. Overall, we emphasise the need for interdisciplinary research in Alzheimer's disease and suggest that international societies should play a huge role in this endeavour.
KW - Alzheimer's disease
KW - Interdisciplinary
KW - International societies
KW - Research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089742166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.14336/AD.2020.0602
DO - 10.14336/AD.2020.0602
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85089742166
SN - 2152-5250
VL - 12
SP - 36
EP - 41
JO - Aging and Disease
JF - Aging and Disease
IS - 1
ER -