Major European project on neurodegenerative diseases

On 14 March, the European Platform for Neurodegenerative Diseases (EPND) launched a database that brings together 67 cohorts from 17 European countries to facilitate research. Featuring an extensive list of cohorts covering different neurodegenerative diseases, this catalogue brings together a wealth of metadata in a single location . Open and accessible to all research teams, this new resource will make it possible to discover ongoing studies and to carry out searches by disease area, biological sample type, imaging and cognitive data, etc.).

Giovanni Frisoni, professor at the Department of Rehabilitation and Geriatrics at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and director of the Memory Centre of the HUG, contributed to the development of the platform. Professor Frisoni will also provide a cohort composed of more than 700 participants to join in this unprecedented European effort to reduce the burden of neurodegenerative diseases on the health of elderly people and their families.

Funded by the European Union's Innovative Medicines Initiative, EPND aims to accelerate the identification, development and validation of biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases through collaborative data and sample sharing. The AD Workbench of the Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative will feed the EPND platform, connecting it to a global network of researchers.

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