EPAD - European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia

European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia

- Newsletter January 2018 -

---

Welcome

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I wish you a happy 2018 and hope the past holiday season has allowed you to relax and spend time with your loved ones so that you can start 2018 fully re-energized and ready to make this the best EPAD year ever. EPAD is entering its fourth year and it promises to be an exciting year as we get ready to start the first PoC study in early autumn.

To reach this critical milestone we need the engagement and support of all of you to get the PoC platform operating at full capacity. During the last months of 2017 we have worked closely with IQVIA (formerly Quintiles) on LCS study management to allow the opening of more sites faster, aiming at having 30-40 sites open and recruiting before the summer. To support these efforts, the financial arrangement for sites have been revised extensively resulting in a significant increase of the per visit fees. To further support recruitment efforts, a recruitment task force has been put in place that will connect with sites on an individual basis to help determine how to best boost recruitment. PrePAD velocity and LCS light are up and running which will help the LCS to recruit more research participants with prodromal dementia who are amyloid positive and therefore ready to participate in the first PoC studies.

Although the EPAD platform has been on the radar of many of the leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for some time, this year you will see increased activity from the clinical candidate selection committee as we prepare to take EPAD on the road and brand EPAD as the preferred platform for running secondary prevention studies in AD. To this effect, we are planning a satellite symposium during AAIC in Chicago specifically focused on explaining to our industry colleagues what it means to test an intervention in EPAD … so stay tuned, more to come on this shortly.

Just before the year-end we also received the formal feedback from our successful mid-term review in September and we are already following through on some of the reviewers’ recommendations. First, we are accelerating our efforts to expand EPAD beyond proof-of-concept studies and by doing so making sure that we maximize the possibilities for EPAD’s research participants to participate in an interventional study, while at the same time fully leveraging EPAD’s capabilities in bringing an effective treatment to patients faster. Secondly, the EPAD Academy has been officially launched with the first in a series of inspirational lectures from Prof Craig Ritchie on “The Dementia Concept after 2020: Research to change Practice, Public Perception and Politicians’ Perspectives”.

We have a lot of work to do in the months ahead to get ready for the first EPAD PoC study and I am confident that we will get it done. We need to, because the moment we joined EPAD everyone took on the responsibility to make a difference for the people that rely on us. We owe it to our research participants and their families to make EPAD work … they are counting on you.

This electronic newsletter will be published quarterly and be accessible via the EPAD website (https://alzheimer.noemi.lu) to inform the Alzheimer’s community on EPAD’s main achievements and upcoming events as well as allowing you to meet the scientists who make it all happen.  

We hope you enjoy this issue of the EPAD newsletter! Happy reading!

Serge Van der Geyten

EPAD Coordinator

---

2017 Highlights 

---
APM Awards 2017

The Story behind the Picture

APM Awards 2017

The Association for Project Management (APM) was formed in 1972, with the mission to “Inspire communities to deliver meaningful change for societal benefit by advancing the art, science, theory and practice of project management”. This award-winning association has over 23,000 individual and 570 corporate members making it the largest professional body of its kind in Europe. The APM Project Management …

Read more.

---

Meet the EPAD team

Interview with Joseph Milne

Interview with Joseph Milne

What is your current role in EPAD? I am the project manager for the EPAD Longitudinal Cohort Study (LCS) at IQVIA, formally Quintiles.  As all of the EPAD team will know, IQVIA have very recently been given an enhanced role in the LCS study.  This has given me a much broader scope in the study, where my key goals are …

Read more.

Interview with Katrin Haeverans

Interview with Katrin Haeverans

What is your current role in EPAD? As a Janssen employee, I support the EPAD team from an operational perspective. I hope to bring my experience and can help building the EPAD POC platform so that it’s ready to welcome the first Intervention Owners in 2018 and beyond! What did you do prior to joining EPAD? At Janssen, I have …

Read more.

---
EPAD design

EPAD presents @

• EPAD presentation in the European Parliament in Brussels (Belgium) by Craig Ritchie - Lunch Debate organized by Alzheimer Europe - February 27

---

Quarterly Quote

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right”

 - Oprah Winfrey -

---