Connecting Cohorts to Diminish Alzheimer’s Disease (CONCORD-AD): A Report of an International Research Collaboration Network (original) (raw)
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Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2012
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Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association, 2018
The Alzheimer's Association's Research Roundtable met in November 2017 to explore the new National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association Research Framework for Alzheimer's disease. The meeting allowed experts in the field from academia, industry, and government to provide perspectives on the new National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association Research Framework. This review will summarize the "A, T, N System" (Amyloid, Tau, and Neurodegeneration) using biomarkers and how this may be applied to clinical research and drug development. In addition, challenges and barriers to the potential adoption of this new framework will be discussed. Finally, future directions for research will be proposed.
Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2019
Large longitudinal biomarkers database focusing on middle age is needed for AD prevention. Methods: Data for cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analytes, molecular imaging of cerebral fibrillar βamyloid with positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based brain structures, and clinical/cognitive outcomes were harmonized across eight AD biomarker studies. Statistical power was estimated. Results: The harmonized database included 7779 participants with clinical/cognitive data: 3542 were 18~65 years at baseline, 5865 had longitudinal cognitive data for a median of 4.7 years 2473 participated in the CSF studies (906 had longitudinal data), 2496 participated in the MRI studies (1283 had longitudinal data), and 1498 participated in the PET amyloid studies (849 had longitudinal data). The database provides adequate power for detecting early biomarker changes, and demonstrates the feasibility of AD prevention trials on middle-aged individuals. Conclusions: The harmonized database is an optimum resource to design AD prevention trials decades prior to symptomatic onset.
EU/US/CTAD Task Force: Lessons Learned from Recent and Current Alzheimer's Prevention Trials
The journal of prevention of Alzheimer's disease, 2017
At a meeting of the EU/US/Clinical Trials in Alzheimer's Disease (CTAD) Task Force in December 2016, an international group of investigators from industry, academia, and regulatory agencies reviewed lessons learned from ongoing and planned prevention trials, which will help guide future clinical trials of AD treatments, particularly in the pre-clinical space. The Task Force discussed challenges that need to be addressed across all aspects of clinical trials, calling for innovation in recruitment and retention, infrastructure development, and the selection of outcome measures. While cognitive change provides a marker of disease progression across the disease continuum, there remains a need to identify the optimal assessment tools that provide clinically meaningful endpoints. Patient- and informant-reported assessments of cognition and function may be useful but present additional challenges. Imaging and other biomarkers are also essential to maximize the efficiency of and the inf...
On the path to 2025: understanding the Alzheimer's disease continuum
Alzheimer's research & therapy, 2017
Basic research advances in recent years have furthered our understanding of the natural history of Alzheimer's disease (AD). It is now recognized that pathophysiological changes begin many years prior to clinical manifestations of disease and the spectrum of AD spans from clinically asymptomatic to severely impaired. Defining AD purely by its clinical presentation is thus artificial and efforts have been made to recognize the disease based on both clinical and biomarker findings. Advances with biomarkers have also prompted a shift in how the disease is considered as a clinico-pathophysiological entity, with an increasing appreciation that AD should not only be viewed with discrete and defined clinical stages, but as a multifaceted process moving along a seamless continuum. Acknowledging this concept is critical to understanding the development process for disease-modifying therapies, and for initiating effective diagnostic and disease management options. In this article, we disc...
Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2020
This study surveys the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the research literature, the scientific community, and the journals containing AD papers over a 35-year period. Research papers on AD published from 1983 to 2017 in journals indexed in the Web of Science were analyzed in seven five-year periods. The number of AD papers increased from 1,095 in 1983-1987 to 50,532 by 2013-2017 and in the same time period, the number of participating countries went from 27 to 152. The US was the most prolific country throughout, followed by several European countries, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Asian countries have emerged and by 2013-2017, China surpassed all but the US in productivity. Countries in Latin America and Africa have also contributed to AD research. Additionally, several new non-governmental institutions (e.g., ADNI, ADI) have emerged and now play a key role in the fight against AD. Likewise the AD scientific publishing universe evolved in various aspects: an increase in number of journals containing AD papers (227 journals in 1983-1987 to 3,257 in 2013-2017); appearance of several AD-focused journals, e.g., Alzheimer's & Dementia, Journal of Alzheimer's Disease; and the development of special issues dedicated to AD. Our paper complements the numerous extant papers on theoretical and clinical aspects of AD and provides a description of the research landscape of the countries and journals contributing papers related to AD.
The Vallecas Project: A Cohort to Identify Early Markers and Mechanisms of Alzheimer’s Disease
Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 2015
Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a major threat for the well-being of an increasingly aged world population. The physiopathological mechanisms of late-onset AD are multiple, possibly heterogeneous, and not well understood. Different combinations of variables from several domains (i.e., clinical, neuropsychological, structural, and biochemical markers) may predict dementia conversion, according to distinct physiopathological pathways, in different groups of subjects. Methods: We launched the Vallecas Project (VP), a cohort study of non-demented people aged 70-85, to characterize the social, clinical, neuropsychological, structural, and biochemical underpinnings of AD inception. Given the exploratory nature of the VP, multidimensional and machine learning techniques will be applied, in addition to the traditional multivariate statistical methods. Results: A total of 1169 subjects were recruited between October 2011 and December 2013. Mean age was 74.4 years (SD 3.9), 63.5% of the subjects were women, and 17.9% of the subjects were carriers of at least one ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E gene. Cognitive diagnoses at inclusion were as follows: normal cognition 93.0% and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) 7.0% (3.1% amnestic MCI, 0.1% non-amnestic MCI, 3.8% mixed MCI). Blood samples were obtained and stored for future determinations in 99.9% of the subjects and 3T magnetic resonance imaging study was conducted in 89.9% of the volunteers. The cohort is being followed up annually for 4 years after the baseline. Conclusion: We have established a valuable homogeneous single-center cohort which, by identifying groups of variables associated with high risk of MCI or dementia conversion, should help to clarify the early physiopathological mechanisms of AD and should provide avenues for prompt diagnosis and AD prevention.