AMYPAD Newsletter - August 2021

Hello everyone,

September brings everyone back from their holidays so hope you are all suitably rested and ready to go again.

With our project’s extension to September 2022 fully established, we continue to work on curating the data and diaries (over 2,500 collected) from our Diagnostic study as well as over 1,000 prospective scans collected in our Prognostic Study.

Firstly, we would like to congratulate Lyduine Collij and Gemma Salvadó on successfully defending their PhD thesis as a large component of their work is related to AMYPAD activities. Well done to both of you. Other good news was that Arianna Sala was awarded the de Leon Trainee Prize in Neuroimaging at AAIC this year in July for her AMYPAD WP5 paper on longitudinal pathways of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and positron emission tomography (PET) biomarkers of amyloid-β positivity. We also had a range of poster and oral presentations at AAIC; the conference had a huge biomarker component, and it was interesting to see the many varied PET amyloid presentations.

Now that aducanumab has been approved in the US by the FDA, the possible use of amyloid PET, not only to initiate treatment, but also as means of monitoring target engagement in the form of amyloid removal was a hot topic of discussion.

September brings a whole raft of deliverables to IMI so the AMYPAD team is working hard to produce these for our funding body and lastly, we will have our Annual General Assembly in October, so we look forward to inviting all our close colleagues and collaborators to hear about our progress in the last year as well as our plans for the coming final year of our program.

Please don’t hesitate to contact myself or our co-lead Frederik Barkhof if you want any further details on AMYPAD. We also have a nice website which contains all our latest study updates and publications too.

This electronic newsletter will be published quarterly and be accessible via the AMYPAD website. In this issue, we present you the achievements of the past quarter and the latest AMYPAD paper. In addition, you can also get to know two AMYPAD collaborators, Alexander Drzezga and Catriona Wimberley who share some of their expectations with us.

The 2021 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) took place from 26-30 July as a hybrid event (online and in the city of Denver, US).

More than 12,000 registered attendees from over 110 countries joined the meeting to discuss the latest studies, theories and discoveries that will help bring the world closer to breakthroughs in dementia science. Please visit the AAIC 2021 website to learn more about the research findings and discoveries that were shared by researchers from around the globe.

Lyduine Collij gave an inspiring presentation entitled “Regional amyloid accumulation predicts memory decline in initially cognitively unimpaired individuals”. This study investigated the longitudinal trajectory of global and regional Aβ measurements and their value in predicting cognition in initially cognitively unimpaired subjects. We are also pleased that six AMYPAD abstracts were accepted for poster presentation. In addition, Valentina Garibotto and Giovanni Frisoni presented some cases from the AMYPAD Diagnostic and Patient Management Study.

We would like to congratulate Arianna Sala who received the “de Leon Prize in Neuroimaging” for her work entitled “Longitudinal pathways of cerebrospinal fluid and positron emission tomography biomarkers of amyloid-β positivity”. This work was conducted within the AMYPAD project and published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The AMYPAD team had the opportunity to present different aspects of our project and discuss results....

I am enthusiastic about the general concept and aims of the AMYPAD project. I believe in the outstanding value of amyloid PET imaging as a noninvasive tool to assess amyloid pathology in the brain in a regional and quantitative fashion. I am convinced that amyloid PET imaging is a crucial instrument not only to advance the understanding of disease mechanisms in scientific studies but also with regard to improving clinical diagnosis...

I work as a PET-MR Physicist at Edinburgh (UK), and have been here since October 2018. I have been involved in facilitating neuro PET-MR studies here. My role has been to set up the AMYPAD scanning protocol at Edinburgh and liaise with the recruitment team as well as the data management and upload...

The AMYPAD consortium would like to congratulate Lyduine Collij and Gemma Salvadó on successfully defending their PhD thesis in July 2021. We are proud of their contributions and all their hard work – very well deserved! We wish them all the best in their future endeavours! Here is a chance to get to know them and learn more about their thesis.

In her thesis entitled “The AMYPAD project: Towards the next stage in amyloid PET imaging”, Lyduine investigated the utility and potential of amyloid PET imaging in clinical and research settings within the field of Alzheimer’s disease. Gemma's thesis entitled “Detection of early cerebral amyloid-ß deposition by PET imaging and its downstream effects” focused on two main points relating to the study of the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

"I consider myself extremely lucky to be part of such an amazing consortium. To be able to work at such an international level that early in my academic career has been a truly amazing experience. As a result, in the past 4 years or so, I experienced not only my scientific but also a lot of personal growth", said Lyduine

"It has been an amazing experience. Being part of AMYPAD has allowed me to be in direct contact with top researchers from other groups and countries, which helped me growing as a scientist myself by learning different ways of thinking and doing things", said Gemma.

Interesting cases taken from the AMYPAD Diagnostic and Patient Management Study were presented by Valentina Garibotto and Giovanni Frisoni at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting

Our Project Leader was invited to give an overview of the AMYPAD project, she highlighted the collaboration between partners, study sites and various cohorts part of the study...

We organised an online EPAD–AMYPAD imaging workshop aiming to engage researchers across the scientific community in the ongoing analyses currently performed in these two large European consortia, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative...

- AMYPAD General Assembly Meeting
7-8 October 2021, Online

- Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM)
20-23 October 2021, Online

- PhD thesis defence of Fiona Heeman
3 November 2021 at 1:45pm CET
VU University aula (Amsterdam, Netherlands) & broadcasted via https://www.youtube.com/c/VUBeadlesOffice

Regional amyloid accumulation predicts memory decline
in initially cognitively unimpaired individuals

Welcome to the AMYPAD newsletter!

Gill Farrar

AMYPAD Project co-lead

In the spotlight - AAIC

Meet some of the AMYPAD collaborators

Interview with Alexander Drzezga

Interview with Catriona Wimberley

Highlights of the past quarter

Two AMYPAD researchers successfully defended their PhD thesis

AMYPAD around the world

SNMMI Annual Meeting
11-15 June 2021

IMI event "Impact on Dementia"
15 June 2021

EPAD-AMYPAD Imaging Workshop
17June 2021

Upcoming event

What we are reading - AMYPAD latest publication

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