EAN 2021 | The AMBAR project: from rationale to Phase III RCT

Mercè Boada, MD, PhD, Fundació ACE, International University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, discusses the rationale behind and development of therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) with albumin replacement as a treatment strategy for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. TPE’s capacity to remove pathological factors led to interest in its use in Alzheimer’s disease, where the accumulation of extracellular amyloid-β (Aβ) is recognized as one of the defining disease pathologies. Prof. Boada discusses promising early evidence of safety, tolerability, and clinical efficacy gathered in initial pilot and dose-finding studies. Showing a persistent positive impact of TPE on cognition, the findings gathered in these early studies led to the establishment of the major Phase III AMBAR trial (NCT01561053). This interview took place during the European Academy of Neurology 2021 congress.