Trial Ready Cohort for the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (TRC-PAD)

The purpose of the Trial Ready Cohort for the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (TRC-PAD) Platform is to find as many people as possible who were interested in participating in clinical trials aimed to reduce risk of developing Alzheimer’s dementia. TRC-PAD helped researchers enroll participants into these trials to quickly test new treatments. 

The Alzheimer Prevention Trial (APT) Webstudy is an important part of the TRC-PAD platform. Anyone over the age of 50 is invited to join the APT Webstudy and complete quarterly online memory tests. Over 59,000 individuals have enrolled. People who may have increased risk for memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s disease are then referred to studies taking place at a research center near them. The TRC-PAD in-person study served as a way to stay in touch with those that were still looking for the best clinical trial best for them. The in-person study visits were completed in April 2024. The APT Webstudy will continue and we hope to grow and expand this program over the coming years.

TRC-PAD In-person Results

Over 600 people were evaluated and 220 were enrolled in the in person TRC-PAD study. The study team is reviewing all of the results of the memory tests, blood tests and the MRI and PET scans. Much will be learned from all that participants contributed, and we will share updates on this page!

Making it Easier to be a part of Research

A key focus of the TRC-PAD project is how to make research easier to take part in. Most research studies are located in academic medical centers, where many people can’t go, either because of where they live, because of their work, or other responsibilities like caring. We designed the Alzheimer’s Prevention Trials (APT) Webstudy to make it easy to take part in research from your smart phone or tablet. We learned that many people are willing to sign up for an online study, with over 59,000 individuals now enrolled! Keeping people engaged in longitudinal online study is a challenge we continue to work to solve. We invited some people from the APT Webstudy to join a study that includes having a blood test at a community laboratory called AlzMatch. We learned that not only are people willing to sign up, but the blood tests that were collected were useful for connecting those individuals to a research study. AlzMatch participants have given 1,700 blood samples so far, and we are working to expand and invite more people soon! Other studies testing the best way to reach out to people from under-served communities and connect them to research have been done as part of the APT Webstudy. We will share more about what we have learned from those studies soon.

The Promise of Digital Memory Tests

We have been testing whether memory tests done online can be just as good as the memory tests we do using experts in person. If we can show online tests are reliable, that means we can move more of our research studies out of the clinic and into your homes. Some online testing approaches that we are evaluating appear to be particularly sensitive to the earliest brain changes related to Alzheimer’s. We are working to expand these studies and are grateful to the participants that helped us test these new tools!

Blood Tests to Improve Research

At present, the standard approach to measuring amyloid in brain requires a PET scan or a spinal tap. Both of which are expensive and burdensome. Blood tests are now showing great promise. TRC-PAD has increased our understanding of the accuracy of blood tests in predicting PET scan results and in tracking memory and function.  Our hope and expectation is that blood tests of Alzheimer’s changes in brain will greatly improve our accuracy with research and clinical management Alzheimer’s.   

Relevant papers:

Aisen PS, Sperling RA, Cummings J, Donohue MC, Langford O, Jimenez-Maggiora GA, Rissman RA, Rafii MS, Walter S, Clanton T, Raman R. The Trial-Ready Cohort for Preclinical/Prodromal Alzheimer’s Disease (TRC-PAD) Project: An Overview. J Prev Alzheimers Dis. 2020;7(4):208-212. doi: 10.14283/jpad.2020.45. PMID: 32920621; PMCID: PMC7735207. 

Jimenez-Maggiora GA , Bruschi S, Raman R, et al. TRC-PAD: Accelerating Recruitment of AD Clinical Trials through Innovative Information Technology. J Prev Alz Dis 2020;4(7):226–233. 

Walter S, Clanton TB, Langford OG, Recruitment into the Alzheimer Prevention Trials (APT) Webstudy for a Trial-Ready Cohort for Preclinical and Prodromal Alzheimer’s Disease (TRC-PAD). J Prev Alz Dis 2020;4(7):219–225 

Langford O, Raman R, Sperling RA, et al. Predicting Amyloid Burden to Accelerate Recruitment of Secondary Prevention Clinical Trials. J Prev Alz Dis 2020;4(7):213–218

Walter S, Langford OG, Clanton TB, et al. The Trial-Ready Cohort for Preclinical and Prodromal Alzheimer’s Disease (TRC-PAD): Experience from the First 3 Years. J Prev Alz Dis 2020;4(7):234–241

ACTC Solution

ACTC Member Sites were key partners throughout the TRC-PAD program. They provided input on the design of the study, as well as taking part in the various pilot studies testing ways to reach out to communities. Data will be shared for the TRC-PAD program as for other ACTC studies.