On 4 February, over 90 representatives of the EPAD project met in Berlin. Participants included 15 dedicated teams from UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Greece together with representatives from the University of Edinburgh, Clinical Research Organisations, IQVIA and Janssen. The objective of the meeting was to prepare the new trial delivery centres (TDCs) to put the EPAD Longitudinal Cohort Study (LCS) into action.

This Investigator meeting allowed participants to discuss all materials and procedures for implementing the LCS protocol. It also gave the opportunity to the new study sites that will join the LCS in the coming months to ask questions and share their expectations.

Prof Craig Ritchie (the University of Edinburgh) welcomed the attendees and explained how the LCS works conceptually, the purpose of the protocol and how the LCS is different from other cohort studies. 

Ellie McMaster and Neil Mitchell (the University of Edinburgh) also spoke about their roles and responsibilities within the Sponsor’s office known as ACCORD (The Academic and Clinical Central Office for Research and Development – a partnership between the University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian Health Board) in the LCS. This was quickly followed by the role of IQVIA by Joe Milne.

After an energetic coffee session, the afternoon was focused on the operational aspects of the project and included presentations on MRI Imaging Processing (IXICO), EPAD cognitive evaluation (Medavante) and biological sample handling (EPAD Biobank).  Craig Ritchie closed then the day by thanking all attendees.

Bernard Hanseeuw, based at the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc (Belgium), will be involved in running the trial in Brussels. “EPAD is one of the first experiment of adaptive clinical trial design and one of the first data-sharing experience in Europe in the field of Alzheimer’s disease. I am very much excited about the opportunity to share data and to have a very large cohort”, he said.

Nikolaos Scarmeas, based at the Aeginition Hospital Athens (Greece), enthused the added value of the EPAD project after attending the Berlin meeting “The benefit of EPAD is first of all the collaboration of many people from different countries in Europe who collectively put efforts together. The advantage is that EPAD combines two different methodologies (observational and interventional parts) with a careful design”.

In a video interview during the meeting, Craig Ritchie, José Luis Molinuevo, Katrin Haeverans and Frank Jessen explained the goals of the EPAD project for 2019. Watch the video below.