With the recent discovery that brain blood flow decreases — in a statistical and epidemiologic sense — before accumulation of neurotoxic deposits (e.g. amyloid and tau) and before any measurable cognitive deficits, the brain vascular system is increasingly recognized as a key player in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). This opens the way for the development of new disease modifying therapeutic strategies targeting vascular pathways at early stages of AD, i.e. long before the neurodegenerative process becomes established and symptomatic. The central idea of this POC proposal is that High Performance Computing (HPC) assessment of cerebrovascular function from quantitative vessel network data will tremendously accelerate vascular-targeted drug development for neurodegenerative brain diseases. One of the key outputs of the research conducted in the ERC Consolidator BrainMicroFlow is indeed a HPC platform for modeling blood flow, nutrient delivery and metabolic waste removal in large anatomical vessel networks of the brain. However, using this platform requires advanced and specific parallel programing skills, which are in general not available, neither in the research nor in the R&D industrial environments focused on Alzheimer Disease. Thus, we have first upgraded the technical specifications of this platform, developing a Multi Level Application Programming Interface and associated documentation to create a new software, called VITAE, meeting the industry standards, that could be integrated in commercial software products. We have then optimized the HPC capacities of VITAE, and provided the first demonstration of its performances, which can reach the scale of a whole mouse brain (VITAE4WholeBrain) for computing blood flow and intra-vascular transport. Such whole brain capabilities could be accessed as a service provided to end users by partnering computational centers. Finally, we have begun to assess the market and the competitors for both versions of VITAE.
