IMI-EPAD - Newsletter

European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia

- Newsletter November 2019 -

Welcome

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Ever since the Geneva General Assembly and the resulting survey, we have been hard at work creating a framework for EPAD 2.0 that not only aims at maintaining but also strengthening all the EPAD components that have been put in place over the last five years and are at the core of EPAD’s success. As a result of your recommendations, we have devised a five-component model for EPAD 2.0 that strengthens all EPAD’s vital assets, putting in place a solid plan for the future while creating the flexibility needed to assure that EPAD will be able to continue on the innovative course it set out five years ago. The latter is crucial, because to remain successful we must create a system that is flexible, nimble and easily adaptable to the ever-changing insights today’s fast-paced scientific advances create.

The EPAD 2.0 five-component model is built around EPAD’s five main assets: the EPAD site network, the Longitudinal Cohort Study (LCS), the EPAD PoC Platform, the EPAD Academy and the EPAD registers. Each of these pillars may have independent governance and management structures as well as independent funding sources, all under the umbrella of an EPAD council who will be tasked with guarding the EPAD brand and assuring connectivity and collaboration across the five pillars:

• The EPAD site network aims to become the first choice for Industry & Academic sponsored clinical studies in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), by streamlining the selection, qualification and set-up of clinical study sites.

• The EPAD LCS will continue its mission of developing a large longitudinal cohort study to ease research participant identification for clinical trials and generate high-quality data to improve disease understanding, defining risk for developing AD and evaluating efficacy.

• The EPAD registers will be a collection of networked local/regional registers aimed predominantly at facilitating discovery of research participants interested in participating in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease.

• The EPAD PoC Platform will continue to serve as a collaborative platform for adaptive, multi-arm Proof of Concept (PoC) studies in early Alzheimer’s disease.

• The EPAD Academy will be at the core of EPAD’s scientific activities, by taking a leading role in coordinating data access and analysis, dissemination of results and hosting the early career researcher community

Based on the recommendations from the Geneva General Assembly, EPAD has set up a dedicated change management team tasked with further developing and implementing this model by June 2020. In order to make this transition successful we will need the help and support of all EPADistas over the next six months. So if in the near future you are contacted by someone from the change management team, please respond to their request, join the effort to maintain and build out EPAD so future generations of researchers, drug developers and above all research participants and patients can continue to benefit from the foundation we have build over the last five years. We will keep you posted on our joined efforts in securing EPAD’s future beyond June 2020.

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!

Serge Van der Geyten

EPAD Coordinator

Q3 2019 Highlights

The EPAD project is prolonged for six months until June 2020

The EPAD project, originally scheduled to end in December 2019, has been extended. We are pleased to share that IMI has officially approved our request for a 6-month no-cost extension to the project, setting the end date in June 2020. This extension will allow the delivery of the start of the first EPAD Proof of Concept (PoC) appendix within the …

The Story behind the Picture

EPAD opens up its data access system to the entire research community

The European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) project, a highly innovative programme aiming to streamline the testing and development of preventative treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, is very pleased to announce the upcoming release of its first wave of data including the baseline data from the first 500 research participants (V500.0). Researchers will now have access to the EPAD Research Access …

Meet the EPAD team

Interview with Laura Carrera Carballés

What is your current role in EPAD? I am a project manager for the overall EPAD project. My main role, as member of the EPAD Project Management office (WP5), is to provide overall management to the project including supporting the coordinator in liaising with the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), follow up and management of the project plan, assurance of timely …

Interview with Ross Dunne

What is your current role in EPAD? I was the local EPAD Principal Investigator but my neurology colleague Tobias Langheinrich has recently taken over. Greater Manchester is one of the EPAD sites. The Greater Manchester Dementia Research Centre (GMDRC) is a collaboration between the NIHR, Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust and the University of Manchester which recruits participants to …

EPAD presents @

• 12th Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease, 4-7 December, San Diego (US)

Quarterly Quote

“Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.”

- Oprah Winfrey -