One of the biggest challenges in the fight against Alzheimer's disease is that a therapeutic intervention must be initiated at the very early stages of the disease. Trial-ready cohorts are an effective strategy for the identification of participants eligible for these clinical trials, but building a cohort requires considerable planning.
The recruitment of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic study participants has sometimes taken 3+ years and more than 5,900 screens to recruit 1,169 participants. The challenges experienced by trial-ready cohorts have also included difficulties recruiting an ethnically and racially representative group.
A new clinical trials infrastructure is required to increase the efficiency of recruitment and accelerate progress. Collaborations are now addressing this need by establishing trial-ready cohorts of individuals with preclinical and prodromal AD.
This new study reviews the lessons learned from trial-ready cohorts that have been established, with the aim of informing future efforts toward efficient, cost-effective trial recruitment.