On 5 February, the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) initiative held its PoC (Proof of Concept) Kick Off meeting in Berlin (Germany). The event brought together more than 100 delegates including site staff, vendors and the wider EPAD PoC coordination team to showcase the PoC trial platform.
Prof Craig Ritchie, EPAD Co-coordinator (the University of Edinburgh), opened the meeting, thanking IQVIA for the organisation of the event and extending a special welcome to the site staff and study team attending the event. He then introduced the EPAD project, its consortium, flow, structure and the PoC platform. He reported that the recruitment into the PoC is exclusively from the EPAD cohort of at-risk subjects, the Longitudinal Cohort Study, known as the LCS. Following Prof Ritchie, Dr Kristy Draper, the EPAD Global Trial Lead (the University of Edinburgh), emphasised the importance of the master protocol. She highlighted its design and the progress towards the first PoC trial. The negotiations with the first intervention owner are progressing well and it is expected to begin start-up activities for the first PoC appendix in the spring. There was also an exciting announcement that the inclusion of the first participant in will likely happen in Q1 2020. This meeting marked an important stage in the preparations for the PoC with almost all of the study sites coming together to plan and discuss readiness for the first appendix. Two workshop sessions were organised where each site had the opportunity to discuss and work on the PoC readiness. After an energetic workshop session discussing issues across sites and the generation of creative plans, John Tracey from IQVIA presented an overview of 3rd Party Vendors. Finally, Craig Ritchie closed the meeting. 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.