Welcome
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am delighted, as ever, to share the progress we are making with EPAD across Europe with all of the ever-enlarging EPAD community. There are many highlights including a very successful Mid-Term Review, new sites opening in Sweden, Switzerland and France, another hugely successful Alzheimer Europe congress and the General Assembly of our partner project AMYPAD in Amsterdam.
Thanks to everyone who provided support, insights and materials for the Mid-Term Review. This took place in Brussels in mid-September and though the formal feedback has not yet been received, the direction we got from the reviewers could not have been more positive. In fact we were asked to be even bolder and ensure that we focussed even more on the impact we could have above and beyond the delivery of the clinical trials. Special mention was made of the EPAD Academy and our reviewers applauded our ambition to nurture the research leads of the future as well as to ensure we optimise the production of the highest quality knowledge from all our work packages.
While recruitment may have stalled a little over summer – the plans we put in place after the May General Assembly in Stockholm to target new site opening and engage more closely with Quintiles in LCS study management is now bearing fruit. Montpellier, Nantes, Geneva and Stockholm are all now actively recruiting making a total of 9 sites with several in England, Scotland, France and Germany in the next wave before the start of winter. Recruitment is fast approaching 400 research participants and with well-oiled data flows and the new PrePAD velocity system up and running, we expect the balance in the cohort to move quickly to an increase of research participants with prodromal dementia who are amyloid positive and therefore ‘ready’ for the PoC trial. The PoC trial is still on track to start this time next year and we are receiving increased interest from the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology companies to put their compounds into the EPAD platform.
We once again had a presence at the Alzheimer Europe Congress held this year in Berlin where we were part of an Eli Lilly sponsored symposium on Public Engagement (the video on EPAD was very well received!) and it was a particular delight to share the stage with friends from the ROADMAP and MOPEAD projects.
Finally, many of us have just returned from Amsterdam where we all enjoyed and were motivated by the first AMYPAD General Assembly. The Prognostic and Natural History Study dovetails with EPAD LCS and we look forward to that project opening by the end of 2017; the start of the largest ever PET Amyloid Study in pre-clinical/prodromal Alzheimer’s Dementia. We do things big in the EPAD/AMYPAD world – hence probably why our reviewers appealed to us to maintain very bold ambitions.
So what of the months ahead? We are presenting the first data analysis from EPAD LCS at CTAD and this will catalyse the need for locking down our data, sample and research participant access procedures. We will conclude the work on the EPAD PoC Protocol and have all the various legal structures in place as well as all our vendors set up and ready to accept the first appendix. Finally, we will undoubtedly open several more sites and really see those recruitment figures accelerate quite rapidly through the New Year setting us up perfectly for the May General Assembly hosted by our friends in Amsterdam.
Personally, after a slightly challenging spring and early summer – I have never felt so optimistic that we are going to succeed in our primary objectives. We went into the Mid-Term Review fairly confident, we came out truly emboldened though at the same time recognising that despite the immense privilege there is in being part of this initiative there is also a massive responsibility to get this right for all the people who are relying on us to ‘change the game’.
This electronic newsletter will be published quarterly and be accessible via the EPAD website (https://alzheimer.noemi.lu/) and inform the Alzheimer’s community on EPAD’s main achievements, upcoming events as well as allow you to meet the scientists who make it all happen.
We hope you enjoy this issue of the EPAD newsletter! Happy Reading!
Craig Ritchie
EPAD Coordinator
