Precision Ageing Network data release opens new pathways for research

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The University of Arizona-led Precision Aging Network, a U.S.-wide collaborative effort to transform the field of cognitive decline, genomics and healthy ageing research, will release its first comprehensive dataset on normal cognitive ageing during December 2025. 

The Precision Aging Network’s overall goal is to collect, store and analyse data from groups of participants using FAIR – findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable – principles. The resulting resources are to be shared openly with the global scientific community.

The 300-terabyte data release will make the first four years of the Precision Aging Network’s research findings publicly available to scientists nationwide through the National Institute on Aging’s repository. A researcher portal and website will launch simultaneously for global access.

The Precision Aging Network is funded by a $60 million grant from the NIA, a division of the National Institutes of Health, is mapping, measuring and ultimately helping to understand how the healthy brain ages, which may give millions of people a better chance to preserve cognition across a lifetime. 

Many large-scale studies have explored pathological ageing, including conditions such as Alzheimer’s or dementia. However, the Precision Ageing Network stands out for focusing squarely on normal cognitive ageing. These are the subtle, everyday changes in attention and memory that affect everyone as they grow older.

By capturing data from healthy adults across the nation before disease onset, researchers hope to identify the biological, behavioural and lifestyle factors that support resilience and longevity.

The public data archive will offer scientists unprecedented access to that information, which could reshape how researchers understand memory and brain health across the lifespan. Researchers around the world will be able to explore the data, apply machine-learning models and link the insights to other datasets, fuelling new discoveries in how environment and biology shape the human brain.

This wintertime data launch is hosted through CyVerse, which is a secure and scalable cloud platform built to handle the complexity and scale of the Precision Aging Network dataset. 

The researchers use 40 different workflows across their research cores. These are to manage and exchange the data generated. There are also paths where raw data is stored for investigators. CyVerse’s artificial intelligence-driven search tools will allow researchers to quickly identify patterns across multiple of these data types, accelerating hypothesis generation and research collaboration.

“The next step is going to be a raw data release, which is slightly more complicated than the type of data that we are releasing in November, but we are already ready,” LaFleur said. “We have all the pieces in place.”

By bridging the space between data and discovery, the Precision Aging Network is creating a foundation for healthier ageing for generations to come.