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