In its February newsletter, the Amyloid imaging to prevent Alzheimer’s disease (AMYPAD) project reported the important advances that have been made during the past year. In 2019, the Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS) reached its initial target by activating all eight sites. In addition to UNIGE (Geneva), VUmc (Amsterdam) and CHUT (Toulouse), there were another five sites coming on board last year. These new sites include BBRC (Barcelona), UCL (London), UKK (Cologne), KI (Stockholm) and CHUV (Lausanne). The 50% enrolment milestone was reached in August 2019 and the last quarter showed a dramatic increase in the recruitment rate, reflecting the impact of the addition of the remaining sites. With 636 patients recruited at the end of 2019 and 429 scans performed, DPMS is on track to finish enrolments by June 2020. In parallel to the recruitment process, the data management task (data cleaning and queries) is being led by a team at UNIGE, and the first analysis will be performed by the dedicated team.
In 2019, the Prognostic and Natural History Study (PNHS) went from having one active site (VUmc, Amsterdam) to having ten active sites. These sites are: UEDIN (Edinburgh), BBRC (Barcelona), CHUT (Toulouse), UNIGE (Geneva), CHU Montpellier, NHS Tayside, Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtriere (Paris), UZ Leuven and Hôpital Lariboisière (Paris). By the end of 2019, 369 participants had been recruited, from which 295 have been scanned. Additional sites were also approached last year to come on board to strengthen the study. In early 2020, KI (Stockholm), CHU Nantes, CITA (San Sebastian), Fundacio ACE (Barcelona), CHU Lille, UGOT (Gothenburg) and UC Louvain had their Site Initiation Visit becoming fully active in AMYPAD PNHS, completing the number of sites, as of today, to a total of 17. The AMYPAD PNHS is now active in seven European countries. The last year has been really exciting for the AMYPAD project with the activation of new sites and the increased recruitment rate. The two next years will bring new challenges but the team is confident that its recruitment target will be reached within targeted timelines. 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.