In March, Dr. Jenny Ceccarini (program development officer) and Dr. An Schreurs (head of communications) attended the 16th International Conference on Alzheimer´s and Parkinson´s Diseases and related neurological disorders (AD/PD 2022) in Barcelona, Spain. After two years of cancelled or virtual meetings due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Mission Lucidity ladies were excited to attend an in-person scientific conference again, with 2,000 attendees onsite, and host their first Mission Lucidity exhibition booth.

What are your scientific take-home messages from this conference?

An: “The AD/PD conference is always a nice mix of fundamental, basic research and first clinical results. A status update on milestones in clinical Alzheimer research was given, where aducanumab still sparked lots of discussion. It’s clear that we still have a lot to learn about the clinical efficacy and correlation with biomarkers of amyloid-targeted drugs. There was much fuzz this year about plasma phospho-tau as a promising and widely accessible biomarker, a tool we’re also exploring in Leuven. While these biomarkers are not yet routinely used in the clinic, I was surprised to hear from one expert that biomarker knowledge did change the management – with regards to drug prescription and psychiological follow-up – of a majority of patients, so these experimental biomarkers are already impacting today’s health care. Blood-based biomarkers are also in the pipeline for Parkinson’s disease, for instance based on alpha-synuclein or specific metabolites. It will be interesting to compare insights from various biomarkers with other innovative readouts, such as the electrophysiological fingerprints from the brain-on-a-chip tool that Mission Lucidity is developing.”

Jenny: “Biomarkers were a prominent theme discussed at the meeting, with several sessions on fluid and imaging biomarkers. One of the most exciting updates was the data presented on the development of a PET tracer able to detect alpha-synuclein in the living human brain. These results reveal significant progress in the quest to provide a diagnostic tool for alpha-synucleinopathies such as multiple system atrophy and Parkinson’s disease. Also, if we look at the current available treatments for Parkinson's, although they have powerful symptomatic effects, particularly on motor symptoms, they do not address the pathological processes underlying the disease and do not prevent or slow clinical decline. The first results obtained from key clinical trials of disease-modifying therapies in Parkinson’s showed that the most promising drugs are the alpha-synuclein antibodies, although the first two studies did not meet the primary endpoints. Nevertheless, the Phase II PASADENA study with the Roche compound showed some encouraging results.”

An: "On the preclinical side, the research by our own colleague and scientific team member Prof. Bart De Strooper is also very impressive. His team found that human neurons, after being transplanted into a mouse model, develop tangle-like tau pathology and die by necroptosis in the vicinity of amyloid plaques. Somehow human neurons have specific features that make them more susceptible than mouse neurons. One clue points into the direction of microglia: polygenic risk scores were much higher for human than for mouse microglia. Prof. De Strooper is still convinced that any therapeutic approach will have to treat amyloid-beta as the trigger of the disease, a hypothesis he further elaborated with Dr. Eric Karran in a recent review paper.”

What are your personal highlights from the event?

Jenny: “I had the honour to present a talk on the first results of our retinal imaging project in Alzheimer’s patients, on behalf of the ADMIRE team. The feedback was super positive: many people asked valid questions, were impressed by our work and some potential industry partners reached out to us afterwards. Overall a great result. We also met with some wonderful people from Stanford University, including Dr. Birgitt Schuele who collaborates with us on the brain-on-a-chip project, and I’ve been quite busy establishing relevant contacts for my first US trip.”

An: “The past months, we have been working hard on visualizing our project portfolio and shaping our story. We felt ready to share it with the world – which culminated in the first Mission Lucidity booth ever. It was great to perfect our pitch to the many researchers, academics and industry alike, who expressed interest in our initiative. This was also the first joint business trip abroad for Jenny and me, so we spent some long, intense days together but also enjoyed quality relaxation time during which we got to know each other better. Very pleasant!”