We are writing to you with the latest news from the AMYPAD project.
Hope you are well in these challenging times. Since Frederik wrote to you before Christmas, we have continued to have busy times with both our AMYPAD studies. Our Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS) which we completed recruitment in October 2020 is now actively analysing scans (over 660 now processed) and collating data with a view to be presenting at the next Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in July. The Prognostic and Natural History Study (PNHS) also has over 800 subjects consented despite a slow recruitment rate in 2020 with the team aiming to recruit a further 1,000 subjects in 2021.
Some other great news is that Gemma Salvadó and Lyduine Collij have jointly won the Junior Faculty award at the March AD/PD International Conference for their work on the ‘Visual Assessment of [18F]flutemetamol images and detecting early amyloid pathology’. Well done to both of you and for getting the work published in the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging too. Gemma and Lyduine have spent time at each other’s institutions over the last year fostering collaborations and friendships that are central to the success of our consortium.
We also note with some sadness (but great pride) that some of our key contributors have moved to new positions. José Luis Molinuevo has left the BBRC (Barcelona) to take up an exciting role at Lundbeck and Isadora Lopes Alves will be starting a new position at the Brain Research Centre in the Netherlands. We wish them both well with their new ventures and want to thank them for their impact, insights and huge contributions to our AMYPAD studies. Lyduine Collij will take up a more senior role in AMYPAD and Pieter-Jelle Visser will replace José Luis as the Lead of our PNHS. We also want to welcome Michael Schöll, he will be joining AMYPAD via UCL.
So, in summary, we are looking forward to a busy year in AMYPAD, in particular image and data analysis will come to the fore and we will be proud to share the results of our endeavours more widely in the scientific community.
Please get in touch with either myself or Frederik if you have further ideas or questions for AMYPAD.
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 year, the latest AMYPAD papers and the Neuronet Knowledge Base. In addition, you can also get to know two AMYPAD collaborators, Ilona Bader and Andrew Stephens who share some of their expectations with us.
You can download the newsletter here.
Gill Farrar
AMYPAD Project Co-Lead
