On 28 August, the Amyloid imaging to prevent Alzheimer’s disease (AMYPAD) project released its tenth external newsletter and reported the important advances that have been made during the past quarter notably in the AMYPAD Prognostic Natural History Study (PNHS) aiming to follow up and understand the natural history of Alzheimer’s disease ranging from cognitively normal, through subjective cognitive decline towards mild cognitive impairment in order to define the optimal window of opportunity for secondary prevention of Alzheimer’s disease through ß-amyloid PET imaging. To better understand the natural history of ß-amyloid pathophysiology, AMYPAD PNHS is conducted in connection with the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) Longitudinal Cohort Study (LCS). The past months have seen good progress in the AMYPAD PNHS, with the activation of new sites and the increased recruitment rate. 5 Wave 1 sites are now active and recruiting participants:
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VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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UEDIN, Edinburgh, UK
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BBRC, Barcelona, Spain
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UNIGE, Geneva, Switzerland
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CHUT, Toulouse, France.
CHUT and UNIGE have both been activated within the last quarter. As of the end of August 2019, 454 subjects have been informed of which 220 consented. A total of 157 participants have been scanned so far. The team also received approval to include Wave-2 sites in France, UK, Sweden and Spain. The following quarter will see these sites become activated.
The consortium members have recognised the need to engage additional ongoing cohorts from which to recruit in order to achieve the goal of recruiting up to 2,000 participants. As such, considerable progress has been made in the identification and inclusion of non-EPAD cohorts as parent cohorts for the PNHS. The first non-EPAD cohort started recruiting at the VUmc in May 2019, this is called the EMIF-AD Twin cohort. As expected, this additional cohort has really helped boost recruitment. Furthermore, two other cohorts have recently been approved for inclusion: ALFA+ in BBRC and GAP in CITA (San Sebastian, Spain) became the second and third non-EPAD cohorts to join the PNHS. Additional cohorts have already been approached to assess the potential of an AMYPAD PNHS collaboration, details of these cohorts will follow in due course.
The expectation is that the recruitment rate continues to increase with the approval and activation of Wave-1, 2 sites and non-EPAD cohorts reaching approximately 500 subjects enrolled by the end of the year. Considering the recent progress, the team is confident that the AMYPAD PNHS will reach its objectives by the end of the project.
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.