We have now entered the final (6th) year of AMYPAD, and I hope you enjoyed the general assembly meeting in early October like I did. You will find a dedicated report in our November newsletter. Short of having an in-person meeting and being able to chat in the coffee breaks, the meeting was informative and engaging, with nice contributions from our external advisors and IMI project officer. We received positive feedback about AMYPAD as a project in being cohesive and effective, not only in reaching its scientific targets, but also in creating a community and societal impact.
Increasingly, we are putting efforts towards maintaining the momentum of AMYPAD and sustaining our pearls – cohorts, scans, software, network and many more. Human capital is probably the most important driver of our project, and it is great to see that again two PhD theses stemming from AMYPAD have been completed. In our November newsletter, you can read more details about the work of Fiona Heeman and Marthe Smedinga and about new PhD students and other scientific contributors joining.
AMYPAD keeps being in the spotlights with presentations at EANM, CTAD and NRM this quarter, and various oral presentations already accepted for AD/PD next March, when we can hopefully meet again in person.
The year 2022 will be crucial in terms of publishing the results of the Diagnostic and Patient Management Study (DPMS) and start of the modelling analyses in the AMYPAD Prognostic and Natural History Study (PNHS). I am thrilled that though the hard work of many, David Vállez García was able to share the first internal data-release of PNHS data allowing the consortium to collaboratively mine our treasures in the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (ADDI) portal. Early next year we hope to release bigger chunks of data from an increasing number of parent cohorts and collaborators. This again testifies that AMYPAD is becoming more than an individual project but brings together imaging and biomarkers researchers across Europe. We are working with our friends in EPAD and beyond to maintain these activities well after the IMI funding period.
You can download the newsletter here.
Frederik Barkhof
AMYPAD Coordinator
