The Central Biobank and Virtual Biobank of BIOMARKAPD: A Resource for Studies on Neurodegenerative Diseases.

Babette L.r Reijs ,Philip Scheltens,Peter Koson,Brit Mollenhauer,Tomasz Gabryelewicz,Fabrizio Tagliavini,Charlotte E Teunissen,Alberto Lleó,Lucilla Parnetti,Anja Hviid Simonsen,Fay Betsou,Piotr Lewczuk,Anja Schneider,Nikolai Goncharenko,Pieter Jelle Visser,Kaj Blennow,Lutz Froelich,Sylvain Lehmann,Enrica Cavedo,Marzena Zboch,Alexandre De Mendonça,Magda Tsolaki,Inês Baldeiras,Luka Kulic,Walter Maetzler,Elisabeth Kapaki,Marcel M Verbeek,Frederic Brosseron,Bengt Winblad,Tormod Fladby,Henrik Zetterberg,Anne Marie Miller ,Uroš Rot ,José Luís Molinuevo ,Hakan Gürvıt ,Frans R.j Verhey

doi:10.3389/fneur.2015.00216

Abstract

Biobanks are important resources for biomarker discovery and assay development. Biomarkers for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease (BIOMARKAPD) is a European multicenter study, funded by the EU Joint Programme-Neurodegenerative Disease Research, which aims to improve the clinical use of body fluid markers for the diagnosis and prognosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). The objective was to standardize the assessment of existing assays and to validate novel fluid biomarkers for AD and PD. To support the validation of novel biomarkers and assays, a central and a virtual biobank for body fluids and associated data from subjects with neurodegenerative diseases have been established. In the central biobank, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood samples were collected according to the BIOMARKAPD standardized pre-analytical procedures and stored at Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg. The virtual biobank provides an overview of available CSF, plasma, serum, and DNA samples at each site. Currently, at the central biobank of BIOMARKAPD samples are available from over 400 subjects with normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), AD, frontotemporal dementia (FTD), vascular dementia, multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy, PD, PD with dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies. The virtual biobank contains information on over 8,600 subjects with varying diagnoses from 21 local biobanks. A website has been launched to enable sample requests from the central biobank and virtual biobank.

Highlights

There is an urgent need for biomarkers facilitating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) at an early stage in the disease course before the onset of clinical symptoms and to predict disease progression
The use of Aβ42, tau proteins, and α-synuclein for the diagnosis and prognosis of AD and PD is challenged by the high intra- and inter-center variability in biomarker concentration measurements [3,4,5]
Central Biobank Study Population Inclusion criteria for subjects in the central biobank of BIOMARKAPD were a diagnosis of normal cognition, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), AD, PD, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), vascular dementia (VaD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA), or another type of dementia

Summary

Introduction

There is an urgent need for biomarkers facilitating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) at an early stage in the disease course before the onset of clinical symptoms and to predict disease progression. Biomarkers for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease (BIOMARKAPD) was a European multicenter study, funded by EU Joint Programme-Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND), designed to standardize the assessment of existing assays and to validate novel fluid biomarkers for AD and PD. To support these objectives, BIOMARKAPD has established a central biobank and a virtual biobank for neurodegenerative diseases. Samples for the central biobank have been collected and handled according to standardized operating procedures [13].

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