Between 6-7 November, the European Platform for Neurodegenerative Diseases (EPND) project hosted its 4th Annual Meeting of organised at the headquarters of EPND’s co-lead, UCB Pharma, in Brussels. The meeting was attended by over 50 representatives from EPND’s 28 partner organisations, from academia, industry, regulators, SMEs and biobanks, as well as Elisabetta Vaudano, Principal Scientific Manager at the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). Alzheimer Europe was represented at the meeting by Angela Bradshaw, our Director for Research. EPND is a public-private partnership launched by the IMI in 2021 to create a trusted, collaborative platform that makes it easier for researchers to discover, access and reuse high-value neurodegenerative disease datasets and biosamples. By connecting more than 100 cohorts and supporting real-world biomarker studies, the project aims to accelerate scientific progress, reduce duplication, and ensure that valuable research resources remain accessible and impactful long after individual projects end.
After a warm welcome from project co-leads Phil Scordis (UCB Pharma), Tony Brookes (University of Leicester) and Niranjan Bose (Gates Ventures), we heard about the key achievements in the last year of the project. These include the launch of EPND’s technical Hub, which brings together metadata on over 100 neurodegenerative disease cohorts across 12 disease areas, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other conditions. The Hub has been designed to enable data and biosample sharing, to maximise the value and outputs of research on neurodegenerative diseases in Europe. Its underlying infrastructure is the AD Workbench, a platform created by the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative which provides cloud-based workspaces, advanced analytics tools and syndicated datasets – connecting EPND’s Hub to a global community of practice.
We also heard about progress in EPND’s biomarker case studies, which involve a wide range of biomarker assays (e.g. blood tests, CSF tests, proteomics and stool tests) across AD, DLB and PD, involving several European cohorts. These case studies are also progressively road testing the Hub, as well as generating data that will then be shared for further reuse. Discussions centred on the key priorities for the final year of the project, which will end in October 2026. Alzheimer Europe is leading a workpackage on stakeholder engagement, communication and public involvement, and Angela shared an update on these activities, also identifying new communication activities to support sustainability of the initiative. Learn more about EPND: https://epnd.org/
