The Amyloid Imaging to Prevent Alzheimer's Disease (AMYPAD) project recently hit a major milestone with the recruitment of the 1.000 research participant. This collaborative research initiative to improve the understanding, diagnosis and management of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) through the utilisation of ß-amyloid PET imaging has two main clinical studies. The AMYPAD Prognostic and Natural History Study (PNHS) wants to follow up and understand the natural history of AD in order to define the optimal window of opportunity for secondary prevention of AD through ß-amyloid PET imaging. As of January 14th, 400 participants have consented to participate in the study. Of those, 316 have been scanned so far. To date, there are eight sites actively recruiting participants into the PNHS in Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Toulouse, Barcelona, Geneva, Tayside, Montpellier and Paris. The AMYPAD PNHS aims at recruiting 2,000 individuals suspected of possible Alzheimer’s disease with a particular focus on those with emerging amyloid pathology.
The second component is the AMYPAD Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS), which aims to investigate the clinical utility of amyloid-PET in a controlled but realistic clinical setting of patients with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment and dementia possibly due to AD. Over 600 of the expected 900 patients have already been recruited at eight sites across Europe. The DPMS is fully activated in Geneva, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Barcelona, London, Stockholm, Cologne and Lausanne, with a total of 653 patients and almost 450 amyloid PET scans performed. The AMYPAD project has received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 115952. The Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA.
