This past year, the Global Alzheimer’s Platform and the European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia have moved quickly, and jointly, to pave the way toward more, faster, cheaper trials. Will they be better, too?
Alarmed by crushing screen failure rates of the first prodromal Alzheimer’s trials, EPAD and GAP are chasing new ways to reach people who don’t know they really should be in a secondary prevention trial.
Clinical trial centers are preparing to position themselves as standing networks, with standardized paperwork, clinical rater systems, and a central IRB, for trials anticipated to start late next year.
At AAIC, 28 scientific presentations and five attendant meetings of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network showed how data is rolling in while the platform expands to more countries and a second therapeutic trial.
Serial measurements on hundreds of people in the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network put proposed staging diagrams on an empirical footing. CSF markers sTREM2 and VILIP-1 track tau.
At AAIC, updated imaging data in autosomal-dominant AD shows that longitudinal MRI in large numbers of people confirms atrophy patterns. Tau PET is more variable in DIAN participants than in the Colombian families.
Armed with what they consider comprehensive data sets from the DIAN initiative, researchers are beginning a quest to settle an old question that may become key to drug approvals for late-onset AD.
As data pours in, DIAN leaders strive to share and publish it without accidentally disclosing mutation status. The more is learned about preclinical AD, the harder this may get.
While the relationship between Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular problems such as hypertension and diabetes remains complicated, a history of stroke is said to double the risk of late-onset AD.