Consortium collaborating to enhance detection, prevention, and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease
Karolinska Institutet is part of the AD-RIDDLE consortium, a project dedicated to increasing health professional’s capabilities to detect, diagnose, prevent, and treat Alzheimer’s disease. Funded by the EU Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the project was launched in January 2024, includes 24 partners, and will run over five years.
The AD-RIDDLE consortium is an international collaboration comprising academic institutions, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies, regulatory bodies, and patient advocacy organizations.
The project will develop a modular toolbox platform, designed to provide support and advice to healthcare professionals and patients in the detection, prevention, and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The toolbox will include accurate screening tools for risk detection and early diagnosis, including digital cognitive assessments and blood-based biomarkers. These tools will be accompanied by a decision support toolkit, providing guidance for diagnosis and the tailoring of personalized prevention activities and care measures, including pharmacological treatments. The digital platform will also include a community portal with self-guided assessment tools and advice for the public.
The tools will be adaptable for different settings, and a testing study will be conducted in those settings across six European countries, including the Karolinska University Hospital, collecting data for additional research and discovery.
Around seven million people live with Alzheimer’s disease in Europe today, and the number is expected to double by 2050. There is pressing need for effective, large-scale, preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic solutions. While this initially represents increased costs for societies, it also presents significant potential for health-economic benefits in the long term.
“With new research on the efficacy of multi-domain lifestyle interventions and the promise of disease-modifying therapeutics, there is renewed hope for patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers, and a window of opportunity for substantial progress,” said Miia Kivipelto, Professor, Research Director and Senior Geriatrician at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, and Principal Investigator for the AD-RIDDLE project. “AD-RIDDLE represents the greatest opportunity yet for cross-sector progress in Alzheimer’s research and care.”
As an AD-RIDDLE partner, Karolinska Institutet is represented by Francesca Mangialasche, Assistant Professor in Clinical Geriatric Epidemiology at the Clinical Geriatrics division, and Linus Jönsson, Professor of Health Economics at the Neurogeriatrics division. The institute’s contribution to AD-RIDDLE is multifaceted, reflecting its expertise in modelling of risk prediction of dementia, prediction of beneficial response to preventive interventions for brain health, and assessment of health economic aspects related to early detection and management of diseases underlying cognitive disorders in older adults.
The AD-RIDDLE program is co-led by Professor Kivipelto, in her capacity at Karolinska University Hospital, and Niranjan Bose, Gates Ventures. It has an initial budget of over €31 million, distributed across 24 partners, including Karolinska Institutet, Region Stockholm, and the FINGERS Brain Health Institute (FBHI). The AD-RIDDLE platform will build on existing technologies, biomarkers, tools, and lifestyle interventions, including studies based on Professor Kivipelto’s FINGER research.
AD-RIDDLE is supported by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) under grant agreement No. 101132933. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program and COCIR, EFPIA, EuropaBio, MedTech Europe and Vaccines Europe, with Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, Combinostics OY., Cambridge Cognition Ltd., C2N Diagnostics LLC, and neotiv GmbH.