This year, the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) General Assembly meeting was held in Geneva (Switzerland) from 15 to 17 May. The meeting brought together delegates from across many different countries who work on the EPAD project to discuss progress, latest developments and future plans. The General Assembly meeting commenced with Giovanni Frisoni, Serge Van der Geyten and Craig Ritchie welcoming almost 200 attendees. They reflected the evolution of EPAD and introduced the agenda for the coming days. Craig Ritchie then briefly explained the EPAD flow and its crucial components. The EPAD proof-of-concept (PoC) platform has been developed to speed up the development of effective, safe medicines which slow down or prevent the development of Alzheimer’s dementia. Craig stated that the recruitment into the EPAD PoC is exclusively from the EPAD Longitudinal Cohort Study. It was interesting to hear that the EPAD PoC team is being directly approached by many potential Intervention Owners. There was an exciting announcement that EPAD will formally request IMI to grant a no-cost 6-month extension to the project. 2019 is going to be a year of transition for EPAD as the consortium members are looking forward to the post-IMI period, named EPAD 2.0. The next session was then dedicated to the EPAD sustainability Work Package. The team behind WP7 has made significant progress with the aim to help create a sustainable EPAD platform for the prevention of Alzheimer’s dementia. Different scenarios and approaches for the project’s future were shared and punctuated by lively discussions.
The second day was full with a variety of talks from Work Package leads and members. Project outcomes and updates on the current activities were presented. The EPAD family of Trial Delivery Centres is growing with currently 23 sites open of which 21 sites are already enrolling across 7 European countries and more than 1,600 research participants screened. Over the next weeks and months additional sites will be opened. Then, the potential PoC appendices and the progress towards the first PoC Trial were reported. All vendors have been selected and the necessary processes are in place. The contract negotiations and appendix drafting are ongoing and the team is aiming for a start next year with the inclusion of the first candidate for the PoC in Q2 2020. The afternoon session focused around workshops, giving everyone the opportunity to attend parallel sessions of interest. These breakout sessions on amyloid disclosure, online registries, sample management and data access were hugely valuable. One of the highlights was the presentation of the EPAD Research Access Process, designed to give academic researchers and institutions from all over the world a way of accessing the data, samples and imaging data collected during the EPAD LCS. The first wave of data (v500.0) is now available for EPAD researchers only until November when access will be opened to the entire research community. There was also a meeting of the Participant Panel which was attended by participants from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Spain.
The third and final day of the meeting hosted an interactive session where all delegates had the opportunity to ask questions to the EPAD leadership. Engaging discussions were held on the PoC platform, EPAD data and sustainability. Finally, the EPAD Consortium gathered for an EPAD Academy session where six EPAD young researchers presented their respective work. The EPAD fellows’s talks were an engaging end to an overall great General Assembly meeting. The event was then brought to a close by Craig Ritchie and Serge Van der Geyten. Executive Director Jean Georges, Director for Projects Dianne Gove and Project Officer Cindy Birck attended the meeting. The EPAD project has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° 115736, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution.
