Research groups across France, the UK and US are pooling their resources to create the biggest genetic information bank on Alzheimer's disease. Researchers participating in the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project (IGAP) will compare the genomic data of 20,000 individuals with 30,000 controls. Members of the project include the European Alzheimer's Disease Initiative, led by the Institute Pasteur de Lille and Lille University, the Genetic and Environmental Risk in Alzheimer's Disease group from Cardiff, UK, the Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology, Boston University and the Alzheimer's Disease Genetics Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia. “This is the first time, internationally, we've all gotten together,” says Gerard Schellenberg, director of the Philadelphia-based team and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, University of Pennsylvania Medical School. Each institute will carry out its own association analysis, and those statistics pooled into a meta analysis, says Schellenberg. With almost 50,000 individuals, and drawing on results from the 1000 Genome Project, the IGAP aims to deepen understanding of the molecular basis of rare variants of the disease, Schellenberg says, and identify genetic risk factors for the disease. IGAP's meeting and analysis costs are currently supported by the Alzheimer's Association of Chicago, and Foundation Plan Alzheimer, of Paris.