NTAD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
New Therapeutics in Alzheimer's Disease
IRAS ID
233260
Contact name
James Rowe
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and The University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) accounts for approximately 60% of all dementias and is characterised by changes in mood, behaviour, memory loss, loss of language skills, cognitive skills and the personality over the course of the disease. Current treatments for AD are minimally effective, offering minor improvement in cognition but failing to slow down the progression of the disease. A promising approach might be preventative therapy in the early phase of AD, which is similar approach successfully employed in the treatment of many cardiac diseases and cancers. This approach could be realised by defining biomarkers that can stratify prodromal (i.e. asymptomatic) AD patients, from healthy individuals at an early phase of the disease.
The New Therapeutics in Alzheimer's Disease Project (NTAD) is a highly focused biomarker study investigating early clinical Alzheimer's disease. NTAD aims to test both established biomarkers of AD and develop more sensitive and accurate biomarkers using non-invasive brain imaging that can stratify patients before the disease is progressed.
Individuals at risk of developing AD, show aggregation of amyloid beta and tau in their nervous system. To determine participants’ biomarker status (i.e. positive or negative for amyloid beta), prior to the experiment, participants will go through either an amyloid Positron Emission Tomography (PET) or lumbar puncture. In order to capture subtle changes in neurophysiology in one-year progression of the disease, healthy controls and early AD patients will go through a series of assessments at baseline and again at 12 months. A subsample of the group will go through the same series of assessments at 2 weeks. The assessments will involve in-depth neuropsychological tests, clinical interviews, electro-magnetoencephalographic recordings, magnetic resonance imaging, and genotyping. The in-depth assessments and neuroimaging recordings will be analysed across the time points, and groups to reveal and develop neuroimaging biomarkers sensitive to capture disease progression and stratify participants.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EE/0042
Date of REC Opinion
21 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion