Welcome to the AMYPAD newsletter!
Dear friends and colleagues,
Hope this newsletter finds you well in these slightly improving times and that everyone is able to stay healthy. With the vaccination rates improving throughout Europe, I hope we can say that we are almost there! Over the past few months I have seen great motivation throughout the AMYPAD team, aiming to catch up the backlog that was created in the past year. I would like to thank the whole consortium for their commitment and effort in bringing AMYPAD to a successful end!
Within that context, the official no-cost extension approval by IMI will allow us to continue our endeavours until September 2022. In this way, I am confident we can complete the delivery of the work plan. With the data of the Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS) undergoing rigorous quality controls and the data of the Prognostic and Natural History Study (PNHS), every growing, I expect an exciting final year for AMYPAD.
This week, a huge milestone was reached for the PNHS, with the recruitment of our 1,000th prospective participant! Also, two additional Parent Cohorts have joined our collaborative framework; the Microbiota cohort from Geneva and the EMIF-AD 90+ cohort from Amsterdam. Through our collaborations, we currently have over 1,200 subjects and 1,800 PET scans collected within the PNHS. With the approvals of protocol version 5.0 coming in, we will be able to continue recruitment and follow-up for one additional year. Finally, to integrate data from the various Parent Cohorts, the WP4 team has been working intensively with the Aridhia team to harmonize and pool all available data.
Also, a lot of work in the harmonization of the PET scans has been performed by our WP2 team, and in particular the BBRC team in collaboration with IXICO. This a major task, which will ensure the data quality of our primary imaging data.
Finally, several abstracts have been accepted for either a poster or oral presentation at this year’s AAIC conference. I am pleased to see that the project will be broadly represented!
Stay well and remain connected!
This electronic newsletter will be published quarterly and be accessible via the AMYPAD website (www.amypad.eu). In this issue, we present you the achievements of the past quarter and the latest AMYPAD papers. In addition, you can also get to know two AMYPAD collaborators, Merle Hönig and David Vállez García who share some of their expectations with us.
Lyduine Collij
AMYPAD Postdoc Researcher and Project Manager
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The AMYPAD project has been extended for an additional year
Originally scheduled to be a 60-month project in total, beginning October 2016 and ending September 2021, the Amyloid imaging to prevent Alzheimer’s disease ( AMYPAD) project has been extended by 12 months to now come to an end in September 2022. We are pleased that the Innovative Medicines Initiative ( IMI) has officially approved our request for an extension to the project in order to ensure the full delivery of the project objectives, within the original financial resources. This extension will allow to complete delivery of the work plan, by specifically finalising tasks and activities which are essential to address key project objectives. Due to the global COVID-related events, some of these have suffered considerable delays, which would not be recoverable within the initial duration of the project.
We would like to thank all members and research participants for their enthusiasm and dedication to the AMYPAD project and look forward to the final months of what is a really exciting and ambitious project, aiming to improve the understanding, diagnosis and management of Alzheimer’s disease through the utilisation of ß-amyloid PET imaging.
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Meet some of the AMYPAD collaborators
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Interview with Merle Hönig
I have joined the AMYPAD team in October 2018 as a PhD student at the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the University Hospital Cologne. Since December 2019, I work as a Post-Doc at the Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine II at the Research Center Juelich and the Department of Nuclear Medicine in Cologne. My research focus lies on mechanisms that mitigate the detrimental effects of amyloid and tau pathology on cognitive function...
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Interview with David Vállez García
I joined the AMYPAD team in January 2021 as a data manager and senior researcher. In my role as the data manager of the WP4, I am involved in a varied list of tasks that range from the coordination of the multiple teams involved in processing the data (e.g., obtaining, cleaning and integrating), actively exploring it, and supporting the statistical analyses in the study...
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Highlights of the past quarter
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AMYPAD Prognostic and Natural History Study reaches milestone of 1.000 research participants
The members of the Amyloid Imaging to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease (AMYPAD) initiative reached a significant milestone with the enrolment of the 1.000th research participant in its Prognostic and Natural History Study (PNHS).
Recruitment started in late 2018 and is expected to continue until March 2022. By the end of May 2021, 1.471 participants have been informed about the study, 1.001 consented, and 835 already underwent their amyloid PET scan.
At this moment, the PNHS has 17 active sites and 7 cohorts have been actively enrolling into the study (EPAD LCS, EMIF-AD, ALFA+, FACEHBI, FPACK, UCL-2020-412, Microbiota), with two other confirmed to begin enrolment soon. It has also been very rewarding, since a new cohort (Microbiota) has joined the AMYPAD PNHS study and started recruitment.
Finally, the data integration process (from all data sources) and quality check of data has been initiated and the team has also conducted the first exploratory analyses of PNHS data.
"I think it is amazing that my visit to AMYPAD is contributing to the important research goals of AMYPAD. Contributing to such a large study with all these cohorts makes me feel like my effort will have true effect and this make me very happy!’’, said Dhr. V. – a research participant of the AMYPAD prognostic study.
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15th international AD/PD™ conference
9-14 March 2021
Gemma Salvadó gave an oral presentation at AD/PD. This work conducted within the AMYPAD project by Gemma and Lyduine Collij has received the Junior Faculty Award from the organizing committee of the AD/PD conference.
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Upcoming event
- Gill Farrar will be presenting AMYPAD at the IMI event on impact on dementia, 15 June, Online
- Seven AMYPAD abstracts have been accepted (1 oral & 6 posters) at t he Alzheimer’s Association International Conference ( AAIC) to be held on 26-30 July 2021 in Amsterdam (Netherlands) & Online
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