The European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia Programme: An Innovative Medicines Initiative-funded partnership to facilitate secondary prevention of Alzheimer's disease dementia

Abstract

IntroductionTens of millions of people worldwide will develop Alzheimer's disease (AD), and only by intervening early in the preclinical disease can we make a fundamental difference to the rates of late-stage disease where clinical symptoms and societal burden manifest. However, collectively utilizing data, samples, and knowledge amassed by large-scale projects such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)-funded European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia (EPAD) program will enable the research community to learn, adapt, and implement change.MethodIn the current article, we define and discuss the substantial assets of the EPAD project for the scientific community, patient population, and industry, describe the EPAD structure with a focus on how the public and private sector interacted and collaborated within the project, reflect how IMI specifically supported the achievements of the above, and conclude with a view for future.ResultsThe EPAD project was a €64-million investment to facilitate secondary prevention of AD dementia research. The project recruited over 2,000 research participants into the EPAD longitudinal cohort study (LCS) and included over 400 researchers from 39 partners. The EPAD LCS data and biobank are freely available and easily accessible via the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative's (ADDI) AD Workbench platform and the University of Edinburgh's Sample Access Committee. The trial delivery network established within the EPAD program is being incorporated into the truly global offering from the Global Alzheimer's Platform (GAP) for trial delivery, and the almost 100 early-career researchers who were part of the EPAD Academy will take forward their experience and learning from EPAD to the next stage of their careers.DiscussionThrough GAP, IMI-Neuronet, and follow-on funding from the Alzheimer's Association for the data and sample access systems, the EPAD assets will be maintained and, as and when sponsors seek a new platform trial to be established, the learnings from EPAD will ensure that this can be developed to be even more successful than this first pan-European attempt.

Rescreening on RBANS Delayed Memory Index? Forget About It!

“…We conducted an analysis of data drawn from the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) database 9 . Briefly, EPAD was established to overcome the major hurdles hampering drug development for secondary prevention of AD dementia by creating a prospective, multicenter, pan-European, longitudinal cohort study (LCS).…”

“…We conducted an analysis of data drawn from the European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia (EPAD) database. 9 Briefly, EPAD was established to overcome the major hurdles hampering drug development for secondary prevention of AD dementia by creating a prospective, multicenter, pan-European, longitudinal cohort study (LCS). Participants are recruited mainly from existing parent cohorts across Europe to form a "probability-spectrum" population covering the entire continuum of anticipated probability for AD dementia development.…”

Data sharing in neurodegenerative disease research: challenges and learnings from the innovative medicines initiative public-private partnership model

“…Numerous initiatives for data sharing have been established, such as the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), Global Alzheimer’s Association Interrogation Network (GAAIN) and Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (ADDI) in the United States, the Australian Imaging Biomarker & Lifestyle Flagship Study of Aging (AIBL) in Australia, the European Platform for Neurodegenerative Diseases (EPND) in Europe ( 16 ), the French National Alzheimer’s Information System, and SveDem-the Swedish Dementia Registry ( 17 , 18 ). Funded through the IMI, projects such as the European Medical Information Framework (EMIF) and the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia [EPAD; ( 19 )] have worked with research cohorts to undertake novel, large-scale research and develop systems and tools for data sharing ( 20 ). However, challenges in sharing data still remain.…”