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Growing federal investment in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias research has led to significant scientific advancements in areas including drug development and repurposing, behavioral and lifestyle interventions, diagnosis, identification of dementia risk and protective factors, elucidating underlying biological pathways, care and caregiving research, career training, and more.
For example, Alzheimer’s disease can now be reliably diagnosed in living people, including through minimally invasive blood tests. In addition, two treatments targeting the underlying disease pathology of Alzheimer’s recently received traditional approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Although NIH did not directly fund the development of these treatments, decades of government investment were essential in establishing the foundation for these and other promising new approaches currently in the pipeline. Importantly, NIH support also facilitated critical progress in the identification of lifestyle interventions, such as intensive blood pressure control, that may reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. We remain deeply appreciative to all the investigators, research volunteers, caregivers, and others who contributed to these accomplishments.
NIH Professional Judgment Budget
Today, NIH released the NIH Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Professional Judgment Budget for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias , which includes examples of how additional federal research dollars could be spent to further advance the field and to help reach the research goals of the National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease .
Each fiscal year, NIH leadership and staff review the Alzheimer’s and related dementias research implementation milestones — specific steps and success criteria for achieving the National Plan’s research goals — to determine additional resources necessary to pursue relevant scientific opportunities. For FY27, NIH estimates a need for $187.2 million in additional new research support, bringing the total needed resources to $4.046 billion.
NIH’s FY27 professional judgment budget showcases examples of opportunities to continue momentum toward the National Plan research goals through additional investments in seven key areas:
- Epidemiology/Population Studies
- Disease Mechanisms
- Diagnosis, Assessment, and Disease Monitoring
- Translational Research and Clinical Interventions
- Dementia Care and Impact of Disease
- Research Resources
- Crosscutting Area: Open Science and Secondary Analyses on Existing Data
Ongoing scientific progress
NIH has also released its annual Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias Research Progress Report , which summarizes the achievements of the past year made possible through NIH-funded and -conducted research. Read the report to learn more about how scientists are:
- Advancing our understanding of the risk and protective factors, genetics, and disease mechanisms of dementia
- Diversifying and de-risking the therapeutic pipeline for disease-modifying treatments
- Accelerating drug repurposing efforts and combination therapy development
- Developing tools to improve early detection, diagnosis, and the ability to track the progression of dementia
- Advancing clinical research on lifestyle interventions
- Increasing our understanding of how behavioral, social, and environmental factors affect dementia risk in different populations
- Expanding research on dementia care and care partner support resources
- Developing open-access, user-friendly tools to support analysis of large and complex shared datasets to enable researchers to accelerate therapeutic discovery
Learn more about potential future research directions and advancements to date!
As NIA and the broader NIH continue to strengthen our Alzheimer’s and related dementias research portfolio, discover more about our vision and achievements to date by reading our latest professional judgment budget and progress report .
2025-09-08T00:00:00Z