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Science, technology and innovation policy

Unlocking Global Collaboration to Accelerate Innovation for Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia

 

 

  

Short address for this page:
oe.cd/innovating-against-alzheimers 

Expert Consultation

20-21 June 2013

The Harris Manchester College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Meeting agenda  /  Post-event news release

The aim of this consultation is to stimulate discussion and the highest possible level of expert engagement in setting out an agenda for OECD action to accelerate innovation for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Specifically, the objectives are to: 
  • Provide a space for country experts, policy makers and other stakeholders to share views on the main scientific, technological and policy challenges Alzheimer’s and dementia raise
  • Create an opportunity for multidisciplinary exchange
  • Capture views on how to move forward and develop concrete ideas for OECD action

The consultation will be held on 20-21 June 2013 at The Harris Manchester College (HMC), Oxford University in collaboration with the Global Coalition on Aging and Oxford’s HMC. It will see the participation of policy makers, academic and private sector researchers, clinicians, health economists, NGOs and technical experts (e.g. from the bio-nano-technology and IT sectors) who lead efforts on Alzheimer’s and dementia research. For further information, please contact elettra.ronchi@oecd.org.

Background

The OECD workshop on Anticipating the Special Needs of the 21st Century Silver/Ageing Economy: From Smart Technologies to Services Innovation, hosted by WASEDA University on September 12-14, 2012 with the support of the Japanese government (MIC and METI) and involving APEC countries concluded that innovation will be needed to meet the challenges and opportunities of global demographic change and mitigate the health, social and economic impacts of ageing. In particular, participants agreed that international action is required to accelerate innovation in areas of critical need such as Alzheimer’s and dementia by leveraging advances in biomedicine and the sharing of data at a global scale. Experts called   for the development of an urgent and global Alzheimer’s strategy that includes critical re-evaluation of well-accepted traditional concepts of healthcare services, expanded research investments, coordinated strategies to address the big data challenges, and recognition of the massive implications of Alzheimer’s for economic growth.   

 

Thursday, 20 June 2013

Alzheimer’s and dementia research today
 

13:30  14:00

Registration and coffee
 

14:00-14:15

Opening and Introductory Remarks

  • Ralph Waller - Principal of Harris Manchester College; Pro-Vice-Chancellor elect of the University of Oxford
  • Elettra Ronchi  and Jacqueline Allan - Senior Policy Analysts (OECD)
 

14:15- 14:45

Why accelerating innovation for Alzheimer’s and dementia is a global priority

  • Michael Hodin - Executive Director, Global Coalition on Ageing, United States

Alzheimer’s Disease is a global social and economic challenge, it will significantly increase with demographic change.  This session will discuss the strategic goal of this initiative: to foster the expansion of 1) new knowledge, 2) research and development resources and 3) technical capabilities, which will enable countries to reduce the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (modest delay of five years in the onset of brain disability can reduce the cost and prevalence of this chronic condition by half; this view is widely shared by experts in the field).
 

14:45- 15:30

Biomedical Innovation for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia: latest advances

  • Jean-Noël Octave - President Institute of NeuroScience, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
  • Takaomi Saido - Senior Team Leader, Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan.

This session will review latest advances in biomedicine for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disease (e.g. innovative diagnostics, targeted therapies, regenerative medicine, gene therapy). It will highlight the main scientific and technological challenges to the diffusion of these therapies/diagnostics to point of care. It will open the discussion on the link between scientific and technological challenges and governance.
 

15:30- 16:15

From Bench to Bedside: meeting the needs of patients, academia , and industry

  • Richard Johnson - CEO, Global Helix LLC; National Academy of Sciences Board on Life Sciences; Advisory Council, Global Coalition on Aging, United States
  • Martin Rossor - Vice-Chair, JPND Scientific Advisory Board.

This session will address the main challenges in moving innovation in biomedicine for Alzheimer’s disease from research to point of care; the new tools and techniques and platforms of research; the knowledge exchange models between public and private sector. It will discuss the need for interdisciplinary research, the emerging new platforms for collaboration, and the promise of technology convergence in the development of diagnostics and therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.

 

16:15 -16:30

Coffee break
 

16:30-17:15

Addressing the Big Data Challenges

The multi-factorial nature of the neurodegenerative diseases requires the collection, storage and processing of increasingly large and very heterogeneous datasets (behavioural, genetic, environmental, epigenetic, clinical data, brain imaging, etc.). No one nation has all the assets to pursue this type of research independently. This session will look at the large scale data collection, storage and analysis problems that need to be solved over the next decade in order to effectively harness technological progress and ensure that data will be turned into useful and actionable health information. It will discuss lessons learned from other sectors on the power of citizen science and crowd-sourcing in addressing complex science problems.
 

17:15-18:00

What data can be shared today? Thinking about the tomorrow.

  • Robert Cook Deegan - Director, Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy, Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, Duke University, United States
  • Simon Lovestone - Professor Old Age Psychiatry, Director NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health, King’s College, UK

The development of new diagnostics and treatments for Alzheimer’s disease requires large science and a new approach to clinical trials. Access linkage and sharing of data on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias remain, however, a serious challenge. This session will discuss what can be shared today /should be shared to accelerate innovation. It will review the major technical and policy challenges to international sharing of data (interoperability, linkage, privacy and security challenges, IPRs) and how advances in information technology is transforming the clinical trial paradigm. It will consider the emerging new role of social networks as patients become agents of innovation.  

 

Dinner reception for speakers       

  • George Vradenburg – Chairman USAgainstAlzheimer's                  

 

Friday 21 June 2013

Creating an enabling policy environment for global collaboration

 

08:00- 08:30

Coffee and registration

 

08:30-08:45

Opening of Day 2

A brief presentation will be given of Day 2 goals and structure.

 

08:45- 09:30

Major policy trends and new regulatory paradigms for fostering the translation of biomedical innovation for Alzheimer’s disease

  • Philippe Cupers - Head of Sector, Neuroscience, DG Research and Innovation, European Commission
  • Mario Romao - Senior Policy Manager, Intel Corporation, Belgium

This session will look at the main and most recent trends globally, and those that are country specific, in policies to support the safe and efficient translation of biomedicine and health technology for Alzheimer disease, including initiatives relating to the ethical and social impact of biomedical research for Alzheimer’s. Speakers will discuss the advances that have been made as a result of these policies and what further progress is needed. This session will also look at whether multidisciplinary research and the combined use of technologies raise any specific policy challenges for the translation of biomedical innovation to patient care. It will discuss how convergence is being addressed in governance models at present.

 

09:30-10:15

Fostering Open Access for Alzheimers and dementia research

  • Walter Kukull - Director, National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center, United States
  • Giovanni Frisoni - Neurologist and Deputy Scientific Director, IRCCS Fatebenefratelli, The National Centre for Alzheimer’s Disease, Brescia, Italy

This session will discuss opportunities and challenges of open access and open data platforms. It will review the open access policies emerging across OECD countries and their implications. It will look at lessons learned from concerted multidisciplinary efforts to collect and process large scale national and global data and how these can be applied to Alzheimer’s and dementia research (for example, the Brain Activity Map (BAM) ; the neuGrid project;  the recent 100.000 Human Genome Sequencing Project in the UK). It will discuss what is needed to reach international agreement on standards and best practices for data deposit, management, access and sharing.

 

 

10:15-11:00

Towards an integrated data ecosystem for new smart models of care and research

  • Tia Powell - Professor of Clinical Epidemiology & Population Health,  Albert Einstein College of Medicine Yeshiva University, United States
  • Mehdi Khaled, Vice President, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Oracle, Singapore

This session will discuss the challenges in designing and implementing an integrated data ecosystem for new smart models of care and to sustain new research platforms. It will consider the challenges of real-time global research information exchange and what is needed to make it happen. It will discuss the major ethical challenges as the range of research focus is extended to healthy people who are merely at risk for the disease but could benefit from preventive therapies. It will also discuss the opportunity costs to governments and to patients of not making best use of the large streams of health and social care data available , and what frameworks are needed to make progress.

 

11:00 – 11:15

Coffee Break

 

11:15-12:30

Innovative partnerships to facilitate the translation of biomedical innovation for Alzheimer’s disease

  • Lefkos Middleton - Professor of Neurology, Neuroepidemiology and Ageing School of Public Health, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
  • Zaven Khachaturian – President, PAD2020, United States

This session will look at partnerships in place or being developed at global and national levels to facilitate the translation of biomedical innovation (e.g. national and international public/private collaborations for discovery and validation of biomarkers, for the development of global clinical trials; but also private/private interactions and new models of products development and commercialisation). The session will discuss potential work on case studies on innovative partnerships which would, in a policy context, aim to identify any common characteristics of these initiatives, their mode of knowledge exchange, the main challenges and opportunities they are facing and how policy is or might address those challenges and opportunities.
 

12:30-13:15

How can the OECD contribute to moving the international agenda forward?

Moderators: Elettra Ronchi  and Jacqueline Allan - Senior Policy Analysts (OECD)

This session will take stock of the main messages from the Consultation, highlighting priorities for an international research and policy agenda and setting out a roadmap for OECD action.
 

13:15

Concluding remarks

End of meeting

 

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